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REJECTED ADDRESSES 



OR, 



THE NEW 



THEATRUM POETARUIM. 



Fired that the House reject him ! — 'Sdeath, 1 Ml print it, 
And shame the Fools ! " — Pope. 



EROM THE 
NINETEENTH LONDON EDITION, 

Carefully Sevised, with an Original Preface and Kotes, 
BY THE AUTHORS 

THIRD AMERICAN ECITION. 

BOSTON : 
W I L L I A I\I D . T I C K N O R . 



M DCCC XLI 



f^ S"^^^'^ 
.^^^^v 



Gift 

^v.Ij. Shoemaker 
I S '06 



BOSTON, 
Printed by I. R. Butts. 



ADVERTISEMENT 



The great demand for a good American edition 
of this popular little book has induced the reprint, 
which is now offered to the public. Nineteen 
editions have already appeared in England, and 
the work, after a lapse of twenty years, loses none 
of its interest. The authors, Horace and James 
Smith, acquired a reputation in the literary world 
by these capital imitations, which their subsequent 
productions amply sustain. 

Publisher. 

Boston, January, 1840. 



NOTE TO THIRD EDITION. 



Since the publication of a new edition of tiie. 
Rejected Addresses last year, intelligence has been 
received in this country ©f the death of one of the 
distinguished authors. James Smith, Esq. died in 
London on the 29th of December, 1839, in the 
sixty-fourth year of his age. His memoirs, corres- 
pondence, and comic miscellanies, edited by his 
brother, form two highly interesting and agreeable 
volumes, and have lately been republished in Phil- 
adelphia by Carey and Hart. To the pen of 
James Smith may be attributed the articles num- 
bered 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20, in 
the table of contents to this volume. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 



I. Loyal Effusion. By W. T. F. . 
II. The Baby's Debut. By W. W. 

III. An Address without a Phoenix By S. T 

IV. Cui Bono ? By Lord B. 

V. Hampshire Farmer's Address. By W. C 
VI. The Living Lustres. By T. M. 
VII. The Rebuilding. By R. S. . . 

VIII. Drury's Dirge. By L. M. . 
IX. A Tale of Drury Lane. By W. S. . 

X. Johnson's Ghost 

XI. The Beautiful Incendiary. By the Hon 
XII. Fire and Ale. By M. G. L. 
^XIII. Playhouse Musings. By S. T. C. 
XIV. Drury Lane Hustings. 
XV. Architectural Atoms. By Dr. B. 
XVI. Theatrical Alarm Bell. By M. P. 
XVII. The Theatre. By the Rev. G. C. 
XVIII. Macbeth Travestie. By M. M. 
XIX. Stranger Travestie. By Ditto. . 
XX. George Barnwell Travestie. By Ditto. 
XXI. Punch's Apotheosis. By T. H. . 



W. 



13 

16 

29 

36 

41 

56 

61 

73 

S. 81 

89 

95 

101 

105 

119 

126 

138 

142 

146 

151 



PREFACE 



EIGHTEENTH LONDON EDITION, 



In the present publishing era, when books are 
like the multitudinous waves of the advancing sea, 
some of which make no impression whatever upon 
the sand, while the superficial traces left by others 
are destined to be perpetually obliterated by their 
successors, almost as soon as they are found, the 
authors of the Rejected Addresses may well feel 
flattered, after a lapse of twenty years, and the 
sale of seventeen large editions, in receiving an 
application to write a Preface to a new and more 
handsome impression. In diminution, however, 
of any overweening vanity which they might be 
disposed to indulge on this occasion, they cannot 
but admit the truth of the remark made by a par- 



Vlll PREFACE. 

ticularly candid and good-natured friend, who 
kindly reminded them, that if their little work has 
hitherto floated upon the stream of time, while so 
many others of much greater weight and value 
have sunk to rise no more, it has been solely in- 
debted for its buoyancy to that specific levity 
which enables feathers, straws, and similar trifles, 
to defer their submersion, until they have become 
thoroughly saturated with the waters of oblivion, 
when they quickly meet the fate which they have 
long before merited. 

Our ingenuous and ingenious friend furthermore 
observed, that the dem.olition of Drury Lane 
Theatre by fire, its reconstruction under the 
auspices of the celebrated Mr. Whitbread, the 
reward offered by the committee for an opening 
address, and the public recitation of a poem com- 
posed expressly for the occasion by Lord Byron, 
one of the most popular writers of the age, formed 
an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances 
which could not fail to insure the success of the 
Rejected Addresses, while it has subsequently 
served to fix them in the memory of the public, so 
far at least as a poor immortality of twenty years 
can be said to have effected that object. In fact, 



PREFACE. IX 

continued our impartial and affectionate monitor, 
your little work owes its present obscure existence 
entirely to the accidents that have surrounded and 
embalmed it, — even as flies, and other worthless 
insects, may long survive their natural date of ex- 
tinction, if they chance to be preserved in amber, 
or any similar substance. 

The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare — 
We wonder how the devii they got there ! 

With the natural affection of parents for the off- 
spring of their own brains, we ventured to hint that 
some portion of our success might perhaps be attri- 
butable to the manner in which the different imita- 
tions were executed ; but our worthy friend pro- 
tested that his sincere regard for us, as well as for 
the cause of truth, compelled him to reject our 
claim, and to pronounce that, when once the idea 
had been conceived, all the rest followed as a 
matter of course, and might have been executed 
by any other hands not less felicitously than by our 
own. 

Willingly leaving this matter to the decision of 
the public, since we cannot be umpires in our own 
cause, we proceed to detail such circumstances 



PREFACE. 



attending the writing and publication of our little 
work, as may literally meet the wishes of the pre- 
sent proprietor of the copyright, who has applied 
to us for a gossiping Preface. Were we disposed 
to be grave and didactic, which is as foreign to our 
mood as it was twenty years ago, we might draw 
the attention of the reader, in a fine sententious 
paragraph, to the trifles upon which the fate of 
empires, as well as a four-and-sixpenny volume of 
parodies, occasionally hangs in trembling balance. 
No sooner was the idea of our work conceived, 
than it was about to be abandoned in embryo, from 
the apprehension that we had no time to mature 
and bring it fordi, as it was indispensable that it 
should be written, printed, and published by the 
opening of Dairy Lane Theatre, which would 
only allow us an interval of six weeks, and we had 
both of us other avocations that precluded us from 
the full command of even tliat limited period. 
Encouraged, however, by the conviction that the 
thought was a good one, and by the hope of mak- 
ing a lucky hit, we set to work con amore, our very 
hurry not improbably enabling us to strike out at a 
heat what we might have failed to produce so well, 
had we possessed time enough to hammer it into 
more careful and elaborate form. 



PREFACE. Xl 



Our first difficulty, that of selection, was by no 
means a light one. Some of our most eminent 
poets, such, for instance, as Rogers and Campbell, 
presented so much beauty, harmony, and propor- 
tion m their writings, both as to style and senti- 
ment, that if we had attempted to caricature them, 
nobody would have recognised the likeness ; and 
if we had endeavored to give a servile copy of 
their manner, it would only have amounted, at 
best, to a tame and un amusing portrait, which it 
was not our object to present. Although fully 
aware that their names would, in the theatrical 
phrase, have conferred great strength upon our bill, 
we were reluctantly compelled to forego them, and 
to confine ourselves to writers whose style and 
habit of thought, being more marked and peculiar, 
was more capable of exaggeration and distortion. 
To avoid politics and personality, to imitate the 
turn of mind, as well as the phraseology of our 
originals, and, at all events, to raise a harmless 
laugh, were our main objects : in the attainment 
of which united aims, we were sometimes hurried 
into extravagance, by attaching much more im- 
portance to the last than to the two first. In no 
instance were we thus betrayed into a greater in- 
justice than in the case of Mr. Wordsworth — the 



XIV PREFACE. 

lished by the opening of the theatre. But, alas ! 
our difficuhies, so far from being surmounted, 
seemed only to be beginning. Strangers to the 
arcana of the bookseller's trade, and unacquainted 
with their almost invincible objection to single 
volumes of low price, especially when tendered by 
writers who have acquired no previous name, we 
little anticipated that they would refuse to publish 
our Rejected Addresses^ even although we asked 
nothing for the copyright. Such, however, proved 
to be the case. Our manuscript was perused and 
returned to us by several of the most eminent pub- 
lishers. Well do we remember betaking ourselves 
to one of the crafl in Bond Street, whom we found 
in a back parlor, with his gouty leg propped upon 
a cushion, in spite of which warning he diluted 
his luncheon with frequent glasses of Madeira. 
" What have you already written ?" was his first 
question, an interrogatory to which we had been 
subjected in ahuost every instance. '' Nothing by 
which we can be known." " Then 1 am afraid to 
undertake the publication." We presumed timidly 
to suggest that every writer must have a beginning, 
and that to refuse to publish for him until he liad 
acquired a name, was to imitate the sapient mother 
who cautioned her son against going into the water 



PREFACE. XV 

until he could swim. "An old joke — a regular 
Joe !" exclaimed our companion, tossing off another 
bumper. " Still older than Joe Miller," was our 
reply ; " for, if we mistake not, it is the very first 
anecdote in the facetiae of HIerocles." " Ha, sirs !" 
resumed the bibliopolost, ''you are learned, are you ? 
So, hoh ! — Well, leave your manuscript with 
me ; I will look it over to-night, and give you an an- 
swer to-morrow." Punctual as the clock we pre- 
sented ourselves at his door on the following morn- 
ing, when our papers were returned to us with the 
observation — " These trifles are really not defi- 
cient in smartness ; they are well, vastly well for 
beginners ; but they will never do — never. They 
would not pay for advertising, and without it I 
should not sell fifty copies." 

This was discouraging enough. If the most 
experienced publishers feared to be out of pocket 
by the work, it was nmmkst, a fortiori, that its 
writers ran a risk of being still more heavy losers, 
should they undertake the publication on their own 
account. We had no objection to raise a laugh at 
the expense of others ; but to do it at our own cost, 
uncertain as we were to what extent we might be 
involved, had never entered into our contemplation. 



XVI PREFACE. 

In this dilemma, our Addresses, now in every 
sense rejected, might probably iiave never seen the 
light, had not some good angel whispered us to be- 
take ourselves to Mr. John Miller, a dramatic pub- 
lisher, then residing in Bow Street, Covent Garden. 
No sooner had this gentleman looked over our man- 
uscript, than he immediately offered to take upon 
himself all the risk of publication, and to give us 
half the profits, should there he any ; a liberal 
proposition, with which we gladly closed. So rapid 
and decided was its success, at which none were 
more unfeignedly astonished than its authors, that 
Mr. Miller advised us to collect some Imitations of 
Horace, which had appeared anonymously In the 
Monthly Mirror, offering to publish them upon the 
same terms. We did so accordingly ; and as new 
editions of the Reiected Addresses were called for 
in quick succession, we were shortly enabled to sell 
our half copyright in the two works to Mr. Miller, 
for one thousand pounds ! ! We have entered into 
this unimportant detail, not to gratify any vanity 
of our own, but to encourage such literary begin- 
ners as may be placed In similar circumstances ; as 
well as to impress upon publishers the propriety of 
giving more consideration to the possible merit of 
tlie works submitted to them, than to the mere 
magic of a name. 



PREFACE. XVU 

To the credit of the genus irntahile be it record- 
ed, that not one of those whom we bad parodied 
or burlesqued ever betrayed the least soreness on 
the occasion, or refused to join in the laugh that we 
had occasioned. With most of them we subse- 
quently formed acquaintanceship ; while some hon- 
ored us with an intimacy which still continues, 
where it has not been severed by the rude hand of 
Death. Alas ! it is painful to reflect, that of the 
twelve writers whom vs^e presumed to imitate, five 
are now no more ; the list of the deceased being 
unhappily swelled by the most illustrious of all, the 
clarum et venerahile nomen of Sir Waller Scott 1 
From that distinguished writer, whose transcendent 
talents were only to be equalled by his virtues and 
his amiability, we received favors and notice, both 
public and private, which it will be difficult to for- 
get, because we had not the smallest claim upon 
his kindness. "I certainly must have written this 
myself!" said that fine tempered man to one of the 
authors, pointing to the description of the Fire, 
•' although I forget upon what occasion." Lydia 
White, a literary lady, who was prone to feed the 
lions of the day, invite^ one of us to dinner ; but, 
recollecting afterwards that William Spencer form- 
ed one of the party, wrote to the latter to put him 

B 



XVlll PREFACE. 

off; telling him that a man was to be at her table 
whom he " would not like to meet." " Pray who 
is this whom I should not like to meet ?" inquired 
the poet. " O I" answered the lady, " one of those 
men who have made that shameful attack upon you !" 
" The very man upon earth I should like to know !" 
rejoined the lively and careless bard. The two 
individuals accordingly met, and have continued 
fast friends ever since. Lord Byron, too, wrote 
thus to Mr. Murray from Italy — ''Tell him we 
forgive him, were he twenty times our satirist." 

It may not be amiss to notice, in this place, one 
criticism of a Leicester clergyman, which may be 
pronounced unique : '' I do not see why they should 
have been rejected," observed the matter-of-fact 
annotator ; " I think some of them very good !" 
Upon the whole, few have been the instances, in 
the acrimonious history of literature, where a ma- 
licious pleasantry like the Rejected Addresses — 
which the parties ridiculed might well consider more 
annoying than a direct satire — instead of being met 
by querulous bitterness or petulant retaliation, has 
procured for its authors the acquaintance, or con- 
ciliated the good-will, of those whom they had the 
most audaciously burlesqued. 



PREFACE. XIX 

In commenting on a work, however trifling, 
which has survived the lapse of twenty years, an 
author may ahiiost claim the privileged garrulity of 
age ; yet even in a professedly gossiping Preface, 
we begin to fear that we are exceeding our commis- 
sion, and abusing the patience of the reader. If 
we are doino^ so, we mi2;ht urge extenuating cir- 
cumstances, which will explain, though they may 
not excuse, our difFuseness. To one of us the 
totally unexpected success of this little work proved 
an important event, since it mainly decided him, 
some years afterwards, to embark in that literary 
career which the continued favor of the novel-read- 
ing world has rendered both pleasant and profitable 
to him. This is the first, as it will probably be 
the last, occasion upon which we shall ever intrude 
ourseh^es personally on the public notice ; and we 
trust that our now doing so will stand excused by 
the reasons we have adduced. 

London, March, 1833. 



This book was originally published in Oct. 1812. 



THE REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



«' The rebuilding of the theatre at Drury Lane, after its late destruc- 
tion by fire, was managed by a certain committee, to whom also was 
confided, amidst other minor and mechanical arrangements, the care of 
procuring an occasional prologue. This committee, // it was wisely 
selected for its other duties, could not, we may well suppose, be greatly 
qualified for this ; and, accordingly, with due modesty, and in the true 
spirit of tradesmen, they advertised for the best poetical address, to be 
sealed and delivered within a certain number of days, folded and direct- 
ed in a given form ; — in short, lilce the tender for a public contract. 

"The result has been just what we should have expected from so 
auspicious a beginning, in every respect but two : one is, that, to our 
great astonishment, three-and-forty persons were found to contend for 
this prize ; and the other, that amongst these are to be found two or 
three persons who appear to have some share of taste and genius. 

"The ihree-and-forty addresses, however, properly folded, sealed, 
marked, and directed, reached the committee. We can easily imagine 
the modest dismay with which they viewed their increasing hoards ; 
they began to think that it would have been easier and safer to trust to 
the reputation and taste of Mr Scott or Mr. Southey, Mr. Campbell or 
Mr. Rogers, than to have pledged themselves to the task of making a 
choice and selection in a matter of which what little they knew was 
worse than nothing. The builders of the lofty pile were totally at a 
loss to know how to dispose of the builders of the lofty rhyme : the 
latter all spoke diiferent languages, and all, to the former, equally unin- 
telligible. The committee were alike confounded with the number of 
addresses and their ov/n debates. JVo such confusion of tongues had 
accompanied any erection since the building of Babel ; nor could inat- 
ters have been set to rights (unless by a miracle.) if the convenient 
though not very candid plan of rejecting all the addresses had not occur- 
red, as a ' mezzotermine' in which the whole committee might safely 
agree ; and the Addresses were rejected accordingly. We do not think 
that they deserved, in true poetical justice, a better fate : not one was 
excellent, two or three only were tolenible, and the rest so execrable 
that we wonder this committee of taste did not agree upon one of them. 
But as the several bards were induced to expend tlieir precious time and 
more precious paper, by the implied engagement on the part of the com- 
mittee that the best bidder should have the contract, we think they have 
a right to protest against the injustice of this wholesale rejection. It 
was about as fair as it would be in Messrs. Bish and Carter, after they 
had disposed of all their lottery tickets, to acquaint the holders that 
there should be no drawing, but that they intended to transfer the20,000L 
prize to an acquaintance of their own. The committee, we readily ad- 
mit, made an absurd engagement ; but surely they were bound to keep it. 

" In the dilemma to which that learned body was reduced by the re- 
jection of all the biddings, they put themselves under the care of Lord 
Byron, who prescribed in their case a composition which bears the hon- 
or of his name." 

From, the Q.uarterly Review. 



ORIGINAL PREFACE 



On the 14th of August, 1812, the following 
advertisement appeared in most of the daily 
papers : 

" Rebuilding of Driiry Lane Theatre. 

" The Committee are desirous of promoting a 
free and fair competition for an Address to be spo- 
ken upon the opening of the Theatre, which will 
take place on the 10th of October next. They 
have, therefore, thought fit to announce to the pub- 
lic, that they will be glad to receive any such com- 
positions, addressed to their Secretary, at the Treas- 
ury-Office, in DruryLane, on or before the 10th of 
September, sealed up, with a distinguishing word, 
number, or motto, on the cover, corresponding with 
the inscription on a separate sealed paper, contain- 



XXIV ORIGINAL PREFACE. 

ing the name of the author, which will not be 
opened unless containing the name of the success- 
ful candidate." 

Upon the propriety of this plan, men's minds 
were, as they usually are upon matters of moment, 
much divided. Some thought it a fair promise of 
the future intention of tlie Committee to abolish 
that phalanx of authors who usurp the stage, to the 
exclusion of a large assormient of dramatic talent 
blushing unseen in the back-ground ; while others 
contended, that the scheme would prevent men of 
real eminence from descending into an amphithea- 
tre in wd)ich all Grub Street (that is to say, all 
London and Westminster) would be arrayed against 
them. The event has proved both parties to be in 
a degree right, and in a degree wrong. One hun- 
dred and twelve Addresses have been sent in, each 
sealed and signed, and mottoed, *' as per order," 
some written by men of great, some by men of lit- 
tle, and some by men of no talent. 

Many of the public prints have censured the 
taste of the Committee, in thus contracting for Ad- 
dresses as they would for nails — by the gross; but 
it is surprising that none should have censured their 



ORIGINAL PREFACE. XXV 

temerity. One hundred and eleven of the Ad- 
dresses must, of course, be unsuccessful : to each of 
the authors, thus infallibly classed with the genus 
irritabile, it would be very hard to deny six staunch 
friends, who consider his the best of all possible 
Addresses, and whose tongues will be as ready to 
laud him, as to hiss his adversary. These, with 
the potent aid of the bard himself, make seven foes 
per address ; and thus will be created seven hun- 
dred and seventy-seven implacable auditors, pre- 
pared to condemn the strains of Apollo himself — 
a band of adversaries which no prudent manager 
would think of exasperating. 

But, leaving the Committee to encounter the 
responsibility they have incurred, the public have at 
least to thank them for ascertaining and establish- 
ing one point, which might otherwise have admit- 
ted of controversy. When it is considered that 
many amateur writers have been discouraged from 
becoming competitors, and that few, if any, of the 
professional authors can afford to write for nothing, 
and, of course, have not been candidates for the 
honorary prize at Drury Lane, we may confidently 
pronounce that, as far as regards number, the pres- 
ent is undoubtedly the Augustan age of English 



SXVl ORIGINAL PREFACE. 

poetiy. Whether or not this distinction will be ex- 
tended to the quality of its productions, must be 
decided at the tribunal of posterity ; though the 
natural anxiety of our authors on this score ought 
to be considerably diminished when they reflect 
how few will, in all probability, be had up for 
judgment. 

It is not necessary for the Editor to mention the 
manner in which he became possessed of this '* fair 
sample of the present state of poetry in Great Bri- 
tain." It was his first intention to publish the 
whole ; but a little reflection convinced him that, 
by so doing, he might depress the good, without 
elevating the bad. He has therefore culled what 
had the appearance of flowers, from what possessed 
the reality of weeds, and is extremely sorry that, in 
so doing, he has diminished his collection to twenty- 
one. Those which he has rejected may possibly 
make their appearance in a separate volume, or they 
may be admitted as volunteers in the files of some 
of the newspapers ; or, at all events, they are sure 
of being received among the awkward squad of the 
Magazines. In general, they bear a close resem- 
blance to each other ; thirty of them contain ex- 
travagant compliments to the immortal Welling- 



ORIGINAL PREFACE. XXVU 

ton and the indefatigable Mr. Whitbread ; and, as 
the last-mentioned gentleman is said to dislike praise 
in the exact proportion in which he deserves it, 
these laudatory writers have probably been only 
building a wall against which they might run their 
own heads. 

The Editor here begs leave to advance a few 
words in behalf of that useful and much abused bird 
the Phoenix ; and in so doing, he Is biassed by no 
partiality, as he assures the reader that he not only 
never saw one, but (mirabile dictu !) never caged 
one, in a simile, in the whole course of his life. 
Not less than sixty-nine of the competitors have 
invoked the aid of this native of Arabia ; but as, 
from their manner of using him after they had 
caught him, he does not by any means appear to 
have been a native of Arabia Felix, the Editor has 
left the proprietors to treat with Mr. Polito, and re- 
fused to receive this rara avis, or black swan, into 
the present collection. One exception occurs, in 
which the admirable treatment of this feathered in- 
combustible entitles the author to great praise ; that 
Address has been preserved, and in the ensuing 
pages takes the lead, to which its dignity entitles it. 



XXVlil ORIGINAL PREFACE. 

Perhaps the reason why several of the subjoined 
productions of the MusiE Londinenses have failed 
of selection, may be discovered in their being pen- 
ned in a metre unusual upon occasions of this sort, 
and in their not being written with that attention to 
stage effect, the want of which, like want of manners 
in the concerns of life, is more prejudicial than a 
deficiency of talent. There is an art of writing for 
the Theatre, technically called touch and go, which 
is indispensable when we consider the small quan- 
tum of patience which so motley an assemblage as 
a London audience can be expected to afford. All 
the contributors have been very exact in sending 
their initials and mottcs. Those belonsjino- to the 
present collection have been carefully preserved, 
and each has been affixed to its respective poem. 
The letters that accompanied the Addresses having 
been honorably destroyed unopened, it is impossible 
to state the real authors with any certainty ; but the 
ingenious reader, after comparing the initials with 
the motto, and both with the poem, may form his 
own conclusions. 

The Editor does not anticipate any disapproba- 
tion from thus giving publicity to a small portion of 
the Rejected Addresses ; for, unless he is widely 



ORIGINAL TREFACE. XXIX 

mistaken ia assigning the respective authors, the 
fame of each individual is estabhshed on much too 
firm a basis to be shaken by so trifling and evanes- 
cent a publication as the present : 

neque ego illi detrahere ausiiii 

Hasrentem capiti multd cum laude coronam. 

Of the numerous pieces already sent to the Com- 
mittee for performance, he has only availed himself 
of three vocal Travesties, which he has selected, 
not for their merit, but simply for their brevity. 
Above one hundred spectacles, melo-dramas, op- 
eras, and pantomimes, have been transmitted, be- 
sides the two first acts of one legitimate comedy. 
Some of these evince considerable smartness of 
manual dialogue, and several brilliant repartees of 
chairs, tables and other inanimate wits ; but the au- 
thors seem to have forgotten that in the new Drury 
JLane the audience can hear as well as see. Of 
late our theatres have been so constructed, that John 
Bull has been compelled to have very long ears, or 
none at all ; to keep them dangling about his scull 
like discarded servants, while his eyes were gazing 
at piebalds and elephants, or else to stretch them 
out to an asinine length to catch the congenial 
sound of braying trumpets. An auricular revolu- 



XXX ORIGINAL PREFACE. 

tion is, we trust, about to take place ; and as many- 
people have been much puzzled to define the mean- 
ing of the new era, of which we have heard so 
much, we venture to pronounce, that as far as re- 
gards Drury Lane Theatre, the new era means the 
reign of ears. If the past afford any pledge for 
the future, we may confidently expect from the 
Committee of that House every thing that can be 
accomplished by the union of taste and assiduity. 



REJECTED ADDRESSES 



REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



LOYAL EFFUSION.* 



BY W. T. F. 



" Quicquid dicunt, laudo : id rursum si negant, 
Laudo id quoque." Terence. 



Hail, glorious edifice, stupendous work ! 
God bless the Regent and the Duke of York ! 
Ye muses ! by whose aid I cried down Fox, 
Grant me in Drury Lane a private box, 

* AViLLiAM Thomas Fitzgerald. The nnnotator's 
first personal knowledge of this gentleman was at Harry Gre- 
ville's Fic-Nic Theatre, in Tottenham street, where he per- 
sonated Zanga in a wig too small for his head. The second time 
1 



a REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Where I may loll, ciy bravo ! and profess 
The boundless powers of England's glorious dress ; 
While Afric's sons exclaim, from shore to shore, 
'' Quashee ma boo !" — the slave-trade is no more ! 

In fair Arabia (happy once, now stony, 
Since ruined by that arch apostate Boney,) 
A phoenix late was caught : the Arab host 
Long pondered — part would boil it, part would roast ; 

of seeing him was at the table of old Lord Dudley, who famil- 
iarly called him Fitz, but forgot to name him in his will. The 
Earl's son, (recently deceased,) however, liberally supplied 
the omission by a donation of five thousand pounds. The third 
and last time of encountering him was at an anniversary din- 
ner of the Literary Fund, at the Freemasons' Tavern. Both 
parties, as two of the stewards, met their brethren in a small 
room about half an hour before dinner. The lampooner, out 
of delicacy, kept aloof from the poet. The latter, however, 
made up to him, when the following dialogue took place : 

Fitzgerald (with good humor.) '• Mr. I mean to re- 
cite after dinner." 

Mr. . " Do you ?" 

Fitzgerald. " Yes ; you '11 have more of ' God bless the 
Regent and the Duke of York !' " 

The whole of this imitation, after a lapse of twenty years, 
appears to the Authors too personal and sarcastic ; but they 
may shelter themselves under a very broad mantle : 

" Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl 
Hi:J crcakhig- couplets in a tavern hall." — Byros. 



LOYAL EFFUSION. 3 

But while they ponder, up the pot-hd flies, 
Fledged, beaked, and clawed alive they see him 

rise 
To heaven, and caw defiance in the skies. 
So Driiry, first in roasting flames consumed, 
Then by old renters to hot water doomed, 
By Wyatt's trowel patted, plump and sleek, 
Soars without wings, and caws without a beak. 
Gallia's stern despot shall in vain advance* 
From Paris, the metropolis of France ; 
By this day month the monster shall not gain 
A foot of land in Portugal or Spain. 
See Wellington in Salamanca's field 
Forces his favorite general to yield, 
Breaks through his lines, and leaves his boasted 

Marmont 

Expiring on the plain without his arm on ; 

Madrid he enters at the cannon's mouth, 

And then the villages still further south. 

* " The first piece, under the name of the loyal Mr. Fitz- 
gerald, though as good we suppose as the original, is not very 
interesting. Whether it be very like Mr. Fitzgerald or not, 
however, it must be allowed that the vulgarity, servility, and 
gross absurdity of the newspaper scribblers is well rendered in. 
the following lines." — Edinburgh Review. 



4 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Base Buonaparte, filled with deadly ire, 

Sets, one by one, our playhouses on fire. 

Some years ago he pounced with deadly glee on 

The Opera House, then burnt down the Pantheon ; 

Nay, still unsated, in a coat of flames, 

Next at Milbank he crossed the river Thames ; 

Thy hatch, O Halfpenny \^ passed in a trice, 

Boiled some black pitch, and burnt down Astley's 

twice ; 
Then buzzing on through ether with a vile hum. 
Turned to the left hand, fronting the Asylum, 
And burnt the Royal Circus in a hurry — 
('T was called the Circus then, but now the Surrey.) 
Who burnt (confound his soul !) the houses twain 
Of Covent Garden and of Drury Lane ? 
Who, while the British squadron lay off Cork, 
(God bless the Regent and tlie Duke of York !) 
With a foul earthquake ravaged the Caraccas, 
And raised the price of dry goods and tobaccos ? 

* In plain English, the Halfpenny-hatch, then a footway 
through fields ; but now, as the same bards sing elsewhere — 

" St. George's Fields are fields no more ; 
The trowel supersedes the plough j 
Swamps, huge and inundate of yore. 
Are changed to civic villas now." 



LOYAL EFFUSION. 5 

Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise ? 
Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies ? 
Who thought in flames St. James's court to pinch ? 
Who burnt the wardrobe of poor Lady Finch ? — 
Why he, who, forging for this isle a yoke, 
Reminds me of a line I lately spoke, 
^' The tree of freedom is the British oak." 

Bless every man possessed of aught to give ; 
Long may Long Tilney Wellesley Long Pole live ; 
God bless the Army, bless their coats of scarlet, 
God bless the Navy, bless the Princess Charlotte ; 
God bless the Guards, though worsted Gallia scoff) 
God bless their pig- tails, though they 're now cut off*; 
And, oh ! in Downing Street should Old Nick revel, 
England's prime minister, then bless the devil ! 



Fitzgerald actually sent in an address to the committee on 
the 31st of August, 1812. It was published among the other 
genuine Rejected Addresses, in one volume, in that year. The 
following is an extract : 

" The troubled shade of Garrick, hovering near, 
Dropt on the burning pile a pitying tear." 

What a pity that, like Sterne's recording angel, it did not suc- 
ceed in blotting the fire out forever ! That failing, why not 
adopt Gulliver's remedy ? 



REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



THE BABY'S DEBUT. 



BY W. W. 



Thy lisping prattle and thy mincing gait, 
All thy false mimic fooleries I hate ; 
For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she 
Who is right foolish hath the better plea : 
Nature's true idiot I prefer to thee." 

Cumberland. 



[Spoken in the character of JVancy Lake, a girl eight years 
of age, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by 
Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter.'] 

My brother Jack was nine in May,f 
And I was eight on New-years-day ; 

* William Wordsworth. 

t Jack and Nancy, as it was afterwards remarked to the 
Authors, are here made to come into the world at periods not 
sufficiently remote. The writers were then bachelors. One 
of them, unfortunately, still continues so, as he has thus record- 
ed in his niece's album : 



So in Kate Wilson's shop 
Papa (he 's my papa and Jack 's) 
Bought me, last week, a doll of wax, 

And brother Jack a top. 
Jack 's in the pouts, and this it is, — 
He thinks mine came to more than his ; 

So to my drawer he goes, 
Takes out the doll, and, O, my stars ! 
He pokes her head between the bars, 

And melts off half her nose ! 

Quite cross, a bit of string I beg, 
And tie it to his peg-top's peg, 

And bang, with might and main, 
Its head against the parlor-door : 

Should I seek Hymen's tie, 

As a poet I die — 
Ye Benedicks, mourn my distresses ! 

For wliat little fame 

Is annexed to my name 
Is derived from Re^'c^cied Addresses, 

The blunder, not^viths(anding, remains unrectified. The 
reader of poetry is always dissatisfied with emendations : they 
sound discordantly upon the ear, like a modern song, by Bishop 
or Braham, introduced in Love i7i a Village. 



REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Off flies the head, and hits the floor, 
And breaks a window-pane. 

This made him cry with rage and spite : 
Well, let him cry, it serves him right. 

A pretty thing, forsooth ! 
If he 's to melt, all scalding hot. 
Half my doll's nose, and 1 am not 

To draw his peg-top's tooth ! 

Aunt Hannah heard the window break, 
And cried, " O naughty Nancy Lake, 

Thus to distress your aunt : 
No Drury Lane for you to-day !" 
And while papa said, " Pooh, she may !" 

Mamma said, '' No, she sha'n't !" 

Well, after many a sad reproach. 
They got into a hackney coach, 

And trotted down the street. 
I saw them go : one horse was blind, 
The tails of both hung down behind, 

Their shoes were on their feet. 



THE BABY S DEBUT. 

The chaise in which poor brother Bill 
Used to be drawn to Pentonville, 

Stood in the lumber-room : 
I wiped the dust from off the top, 
While Molly mopped it with a mop, 

And brushed it with a broom. 

My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes, 
Came in at six to black the shoes, 

(I always talk to Sam :) 
So what does he, but takes, and drags 
Me in the chaise along the flags, 

And leaves me where I am. 

My father's walls are made of brick. 
But not so tall and not so thick 

As these ; and, goodness me ! 
My father's beams are made of wood. 
But never, never half so good 

As those that now I see. 

What a large floor ! 't is like a town ! 
The carpet, when they lay it down, 



10 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Won't liide it, I '11 be bound ; 
And there's a row of lamps ! — my eye ! 
How they do blaze ! I wonder why 

They keep them on the ground. 

At first I caught hold of the wing, 

And kept away ; but Mr. Thing- 
umbob, the prompter man, 

Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, 

And said, *' Go on, my pretty love ; 
Speak to 'em little Nan. 

" You 've only got to curtsy, whisp- 
er, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, 

And then you 're sure to take : 
I 've known the day when brats, not quite 
Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night ;* 

Then why not Nancy Lake ?" 

* This alludes to the young Betty mania. The writer was 
in the stage-box at the height of this young gentleman's popu- 
larity. One of the other occupants offered, in a loud voice, 
to prove that young Betty did not understand Shakspeare. 
" Silence ! " was the cry ; but he still proceeded. " Turn him 
out ! " was the next ejaculation. He still vociferated " He does 
not understand Shakspeare ;" and was consequently shoulder- 



THE baby's debut. 11 

But while I 'm speaking, where 's papa ? 
And where 's my aunt? and where 's mamma ? 

Where 's Jack ? O there they sit ! 
They smile, they nod ; 1 '11 go my ways, 
And order round poor Billy's chaise, 

To join them in the pit. 

And now, good gentlefolks, I go 
To join mamma, and see the show ; 

So, bidding you adieu, 
I curtsy like a pretty miss. 
And if you '11 blow to me a kiss, 

I '11 blow a kiss to you. 

[Bloivs a kiss, and exit.] 

ed into the lobby. " I '11 prove it to you," said the critic to the 
door-keeper. " Prov^e what, sir ?" " That he does not under- 
stand Shakspeare." This was MoHere's housemaid with a 
vengeance I 

Young Betty may now be seen walking about town — a 
portly personage, aged about forty — clad in a furred and 
frogged surtout ; probably muttering to himself (as he has been 
at college,) " mihi praeteritos !" &c. 



" The author does not, in this instance, attempt to copy any 
of the higher attributes of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry •, but has 



12 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

succeeded perfectly in the imitation of his mawkish affecta- 
tions of childish simplicity and nursery stammering. We hope 
it will make him ashamed of his Mice Fell, and the greater 
part of his last volumes — of which it is by no means a parody, 
but a very fair, and indeed we think a flattering, imitation." — 
Edinburgh Review. 



AN ADDRESS WITHOUT A PHCENIX. 13 



AN ADDRESS 



WITHOUT A PHCENIX. 



BY S. T. T. 



This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked," 

What you Will. 



What stately vision mocks my waking sense ? 
Hence, dear delusion, sweet enchantment, hence ! 
Ha ! is it real ? — can my doubts be vain ? 
It is, it is, and Drury lives again ! 
Around each grateful veteran attends, 
Eager to rush and gratulate his friends, 

* For an account of this anonymous gentleman, see the 
Preface. 



14 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Friends whose kind looks, retraced with proud de- 
light, 
Endear the past, and make the future bright : 
Yes, generous patrons, your returning smile 
Blesses our toils, and consecrates our pile. . 

When last we met. Fate's unrelenting hand 
Already grasped the devastating brand ; 
Slow crept the silent flame, ensnared its prize, 
Then burst resistless to the astonished skies. 
The glowing w^alls, disrobed of scenic pride, 
In tremblinsf conflict stemmed the burnino; tide. 
Till cracklincr, blazino:, rockins; to its fall, 
Down rushed the thundering roof, and buried all ! 

Where late the sister Muses sweetly sung. 
And raptured thousands on their music hung, 
Where Wit and Wisdom shone, by Beauty graced, 
Sat lonely Silence, empress of the waste ; 
And still had reigned — but he, whose voice can 

raise 
More magic wonders than Amphion's lays, 
Bade jarring bands with friendly zeal engage 
To rear the prostrate glories of the stage. 



AN ADDRESS WITHOUT A PHCENIX. 15 

Up leaped the Muses at the potent spell, 
And Druiy's genius saw his temple swell ; 
Worthy, we hope, the Britisli Drama's cause, 
Worthy of British arts, and your applause. 

Guided by you, our earnest aims presume 
To renovate the Drama with the dome ; 
The scenes of Shakspeare and our bards of old,' 
With due observance splendidly unfold, 
Yet raise and foster with parental hand 
The living talent of our native land. 
O ! may we still, to sense and nature true, 
Delight the many nor offend the few. 
Though varying tastes our changeful Drama claim. 
Still be its moral tendency the same, 
To win by precept, by example warn, 
To brand the front of Vice with pointed scorn, 
And Virtue's smiling brows with votive wreath^^ 
adorn. ' 



•16 KEJECTED ADDRESSES 



cm BOxNO? 



BY LOKD B.* 



I. 

Sated with home, of wife, of children tired, 
The restless soul is driven abroad to roam ; f 

* Lord Byroiv. 

i This would seem to shew that poet and prophet are synony- 
mous, the noble bard having afterwards returned to England, 
and again quitted it, under domestic circumstances painfully 
notorious. His good-humored forgiveness of the Authors has 
been already alluded to in the preface. Nothing of this illus- 
trious poet, however trivial, can be otherwise than interesting. 
" We knew him well." At Mr. Murray's dinner-table the an- 
notator met him and Sir John Malcolm. Lord Byron talked of 
intending to travel in Persia. " What must I do when I set 
off? " said he to Sir John. " Cut off your buttons ! " " My 
buttons ! what, these metal ones .' " " Yes ; the Persians are 
in the main very honest fellows ; but if you go thus bedizen- 
ed, you will infallibly be murdered for your buttons." At a 
dinner at Monk Lewis's chambers in the A.lbany, Lord Byron 



CUIBONO? 17 

Sated abroad, all seen, yet naught admired, 
The restless soul is driven to ramble home ; 



expressed to the writer his determination not to go there again, 
adding, " I never will dine with a middle-aged man Avho fills 
up his table with young ensigns, and has looking-glass pan- 
nels to his book-cases." Lord Byron, when one of the Drury- 
lane Committee of Management, challenged the writer to 
sing alternately (like the swains in Virgil) the praises of Mrs. 
Mardyn, the actress, who, by the by, was hissed off the stage 
for an imputed intimacy of which she was quite innocent. 
The contents ran as follows : 

" Wake, muse of fire, your ardent lyre, 

Pour forth your amorous ditty, 
But first profound, in duty bound, 

Applaud the new Committee ; 
Their scenic art from Thespis cart 

All jaded nags discarding, 
To London drove this queen of love, 

Enchanting Mrs. Mardyn. 

Though tides of love around her rove, 

I fear she '11 choose Pactolus — 
In that bright surge bards ne'er immerge, 

yo I must e'en swim solus. 
'Out, out, alas!' ill-fated gas, 

That shin'st round Covent Garden, 
'J'hy ray how flat, compared with that 

From eye of Mrs. Mardj'n 1" 

And so on. The reader has,, no doubt, already discovered 
" which is the justice, and which is the thief»" 

2 



18 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Sated with both, beneath new Dmry's dome 
The fiend Ennui awhile consents to pine, 



Lord Byron at that time wore a very narrow cravat of white 
sarsnet, with the shirt-collar falling over it; a black coat and 
waistcoat, and very broad white trousers, to hide his lame foot 
— these were of Russia duck in the morning, and jean in the 
evening. His watch-chain had a number of small gold seals 
appended to it, and was looped up to a button of his waistcoat. 
His face was void of color ; he wore no whiskers. His eyes 
were grey, fringed with long black lashes ; and his air was 
imposing, but rather supercilious. He undervalued David 
Hume ; denying his claim to genius on account of his bulk, 
and calHng him, from the heroic epistle, 

" The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty." 

One of this extraordinary man's allegations was, that " fat is 
an oily dropsy." To stave off its visitation, he frequently 
chewed tobacco in lieu of dinner, alleging that it absorbed the 
gastric juice of the stomach, and prevented hunger. " Pass 
your hand down my side," said his lordship to the writer ; 
" can you count my ribs ?" " Every one of them." " I am 
delighted to hear you say so. I called last week on Lady 

; ' Ah, Lord Byron,' said she, ' how fat you grow !' 

But you know Lady is fond of saying spiteful things!" 

Let this gossip be summed up with the words of Lord Chester- 
field, in his character of Bolingbroke : " Upon the whole, on a 
survey of this extraordinary character, what can we say, but 
' Alas, poor human nature !' " 

His favorite Pope's description of man is applicable to Byron 
individually : 



CUI BONO? 19 

There growls, and curses, like a deadly Gnome, 
Scorning to view fantastic Columbine, 
Viewing with scorn and hate the nonsense of the 
Nine. 

II. 

Ye reckless dupes, who hither wend your way 
To gaze on puppets in a painted dome. 
Pursuing pastimes glittering to betray, 
Like falling stars in life's eternal gloom, 
What seek ye here ? Joy's evanescent bloom ? 



'' Chaos of thought and passion all confused, 
Still by himself abused or disabused j 
Created part to rise and part to fall, 
Great lord of all thing's, yet a slave to all ; 
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled — 
The glor}', jest, and riddle of the world." 

The writer never heard him allude to his deformed loot 
except upon one occasion, when, entering the green room of 
Drury Lane, he found Lord Byron alone, the younger Byrne 
and Miss Smith the dancer having just left him, after an angry 
conference about a pas seul. " Had you been here a minute 
sooner," said Lord B., "you would have heard a question 
about dancing referred to me ; — me ! (looking mournfully 
downward) whom fate from Iny birth has prohibited from taking 
a single step." 



20 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Woe ^s me ! the brightest wreaths she ever gave 
Are but as flowers that decorate a tomb. 
Man's heart, the mournful urn o'er which they 
wave, 
Is sacred to despair, its pedestal the grave. 

III. 

Has life so little store of real woes, 
That here ye wend to taste fictitious grief ? 
Or is it that from truth such anguish flows, 
Ye court the lying drama for relief ? 
Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief : 
Or if one tolerable page appears 
In folly's volume, 't is the actor's leaf. 
Who dries his own by drawing others' tears. 
And, raising present mirth, makes glad his future 
years. 

IV. 

Albeit, how like young Betty doth he flee ! 
Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, 
He liveth only in man's present e'e, 
His life a flash, his memory a dream, 



CUIBONO? 21 

Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream. 
Yet what are they, the learned and the great ? 
Awhile of longer wonderment the theme ! 
Who shall presume to prophesy their date, 
Where nought is certain, save the uncertainty of 
fate ? 

V. 

This goodly pile, upheaved by Wyatt's toil, 
Perchance than Holland's edifice* more fleet, 



* " Holland's edifice." The late theatre was built by 
Holland the architect. The writer visited it on the night of 
its opening. The performances were Macbeth and the Virgin 
Unmasked. Between the play and the farce, an excellent 
epilogue, written by George Colman, was excellently spoken 
by Miss Farren. It referred to the iron curtain which w^as, 
in the event of fire, to be let down between the stage and the 
audience, and which accordingly descended, by way of expe- 
riment, leaving Miss Farren between the lamps and the cur- 
tain. The fair speaker informed the audience, that should the 
fire break out on the stage (where it usually originates,) it 
\vould thus be kept from the spectators ; adding, with great 
solemnity — 

" No ! we assure our generous benefactors 
'T will only burn the scenery and the actors." 

A tank of water was afterwards exhibited, in the course of the 
epilogue, in which a wherry was rowed by a real live man, the 
band playing — 



22 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Again red Lemnos' artisan may spoil ; 

The fire-alarm and midnight drum may beat, 

" And did you not hear of a jolly young- waterman V 

Miss Farren reciting — 

" Sit still, there 's nothing- in it, 
We '11 undertake to drown you in a single minute." 

"0 vain thought!" as Othello says. Notwithstanding the 
boast in the epilogue — 

" Blow, wind — come, rack, in ages yet unborn, 
Our castle's strength shall laugh a siege to scorn '' — 

the theatre fell a victim to the flames within fifteen years from 
the prognostic ! These preparations against tire always pre- 
suppose presence of mind and promptness in those -who are to 
put them into action. They remind one of the dialogue, in 
Morton's Speed the Plough, between Sir Abel Handy and his 
son Bob : 

" Boh. Zounds, the castle 's on fire ! 

Sir A. Yes. 

Boh. Where 's your patent liquid for extinguishing fire ^ 

Sir A. It is not mixed. 

Boh. Then where 's your patent fire-escape ? 

Sir A. It is not fixed. 

Boh. You are never at a loss ? 

Sir A. Never. 

Boh. Then what do you mean to do ? 

Sir A. I don't know." 



CUIBONO? 23 

And all be strewed ysmoking at your feet ! 
Start ye ? perchance Death's angel may be sent, 
Ere from the flaming temple ye retreat ; 
And ye who met, on revel idlesse bent, 
May find, in pleasure's fane, your grave and monu- 
ment. 

VI. 

Your debts mount high — ye plunge in deeper 

waste ; 
The tradesman duns — no warning voice ye hear ; 
The plaintiff sues — to public shows ye haste ; 
The bailiff threats — ye feel no idle fear. 
Wlio can arrest your prodigal career ? 
Who can keep down the levity of youth ? 
What sound can startle age's stubborn ear ? 
Who can redeem from wretchedness and ruth 
Men true to falsehood's voice, false to the voice of 

truth ? 

vir. 

To thee, blest saint ! who doffed thy skin to make 
The Smithfield rabble leap from theirs with joy, 



24 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

We dedicate the pile — arise ! awake ! — 
Knock down the Muses, wit and sense destroy, 
Clear our new stage from reason's dull alloy, 
Charm hobbling age, and tickle capering youth 
With cleaver, marrow-bone, and Tunbridge toy ; 
While, vibrating in unbelieving tooth,* 
Harps twang in Drury's walls, and make her boards 
a booth. 

VIII. 
For what is Hamlet, but a hare in March ? 
And what is Brutus, but a croaking owl ? 
And what is Rolla ? Cupid steeped in starch, 
Orlando's helmet in Augustin's cowl. 
Shakspeare, how true thine adage, " fair is foul !'' 
To him whose soul is with fruition fraught, 
The sons: of Braham is an Irish howl. 
Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, 
And nought is every thing, and every thing is 
nought. 

* A rather obscure mode of expression for .7et«s'-harp ; 
■which some etymologists allege, by the way, to be a corrup- 
tion of Jaiws'-harp. No connexion, therefore, with King 
David. 



CU I BON o? 25 

IX. 

Sons of Parnassus ! whom I view above, 
Not laurel crowned, but clad in rusty black ; 
Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe's grove, 
But pacing Grubb-street on a jaded hack ; 
What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack, 
Ye mar to make again ! for sure, ere long, 
Condemned to tread the bard's time-sanctioned 

track, 
Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng. 
And reproduce, in rags, the rags ye blot in song. 

X. 

So fares the follower in the Muses' train ; 
He toils to starve, and only lives in death ; 
We slight him, till our patronage is vain, 
Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, 
And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe — 
Oh ! with what tragic horror would he start, 
(Could ye be conjured from the grave beneath,) 
To find the stage again a Thespian cart, 
And elephants and colts down trampling Shak- 
speare's art. 



26 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

XI. 

Hence pedant Nature ! with thy Grecian rules ! 
Centaurs (not fabulous) those rules efface ; 
Back, sister Muses, to your native schools ; 
Here booted Grooms usurp Apollo's place, 
Hoofs shame the boards that Garrick used to 

grace, 
The play of limbs succeeds the play of wit, 
Man yields the drama to the Hou'yn'm race, 
His prompter spurs, his licenser the bit, 
The stage a stable-yard, a jockey -club the pit. 

XII. 

Is it for these ye rear this proud abode ? 
Is it for these your superstition seeks 
To build a temple worthy of a god, 
To laud a monkey, or to worship leeks ? 
Then be the stage, to recompense your freaks, 
A Motley chaos, jumbling age and ranks, 
Where Punch, the lignum-vitae Roscius, squeaks, 
And wisdom weeps, and Folly plays her pranks, 
And moody Madness laughs and hugs the chain he 
clanks. 



C U I B N ? 27. 

" The author has succeeded better in copying the moody 
and misanthropic sentiments of Childe Harold, than the ner- 
vous and impetuous diction in which his noble biographer has 
embodied them. The attempt, however, indicates very con- 
siderable power; and the flow of the verse and the construc- 
tion of the poetical period are imitated with no ordinary skill." 
— Edinhursh Review. 



28 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



SECRETARY OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE 
OF DRURY LANE PLAYHOUSE. 

Sir, 

To the gewgaw fetters of rhyme (invented 
by the monks to enslave the people) 1 have a root- 
ed objection. I have therefore written an address 
for your theatre in plain homespun, yeoman's ^ros5 ; 
in doing whereof I hope I am swayed by nothing 
but an independent wish to open the eyes of this 
gulled people, to prevent a repetition of the drama- 
tic bamboozling they have hitherto labored under. 
If you like what I have done, and mean to make 
use of it, I don't want any such arisirocratic re- 
ward as a piece of plate with two griffins sprawl- 
ing upon it, or a dog and a jackass fighting for a 
ha'pVorth of gilt gingerbread, or any such Bar- 
tholomew-fair nonsense. All I ask is, that the 
door-keepers of your playhouse may take all the 
sets of my Register now on hand, and /orce every 



HAMPSHIRE farmer's ADDRESS. 29 

body who enters your doors to buy one, giving 
afterwards a debtor and creditor account of what 
they have received, post-paid, and in due course 
remitting me the money and unsold Registers, car- 
riage-paid. 

1 am, &ic. 

W. C * 



IN THE CHARACTER OF 

A HAMPSHIRE FARMER. 



Rabida qui concitus ir^ 



Implevit pariter ternis latratibus auras, 
Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agros. 

Ovid. 



Most thinking People, 
When persons address an audience from the stage, 
it is usual, either in words or gesture, to say, 
" Ladies and Gentlemen, your servant." If 1 were 
base enough, mean enough, paltry enough, and 

* William Cobbett. 



30 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

brute beast enough, to follow that fashion, I should 
tell two lies in a breath. In the first place, you 
are not Ladies and Gentlemen, but I hope some- 
thing better, that is to say, honest men and women ; 
and in the next place, if you were ever so much 
ladies, and ever so much gentlemen, I am not, nor 
ever will be, your humble servant. You see me 
here, most thinking people, by mere chance. I 
have not been within the doors of a playhouse be- 
fore for these ten years ; nor, till that abominable 
custom of taking money at the doors is discon- 
tinued, will 1 ever sanction a theatre with my pres- 
ence. The stage door is the only gate oi freedom 
in the whole edifice, and through that I made my 
way from Bagshaw's* in Brydges Street, to accost 
you. Look about you. Are you not all comfort- 
able ? Nay, never slink, mun ; speak out, if you 
are dissatisfied, and tell me so before I leave town. 
You are now, (thanks to Mr. fVkitbread,) got into 
a large comfortable house. Not into a gim- 
craclt palace ; not into a Solomon^ s Temple; not 

* Bagshavv. At that time the publisher of Cobbett's 
Register. 



HAMPSHIRE farmer's ADDRESS. 31 

into a frost-work of Brobdignag filigree ; but into a 
plain, honest, homely, industrious, wholesome, brown 
bricJc playhouse. You have been struggling for 
independence and elbow-room these three years ; 
and who gave it you ? Who helped you out of 
Lilliput ? Who routed you from a rat-hole, five 
inches by four, to perch you in a palace ? Again 
and again I answer, Mr. Whithread. You might 
have sweltered in that place with the Greek name* 
till doomsday, and neither Lord Castlereagh, Mr. 
Canning, no, nor the Marquess Wellesley, would 
have turned a trowel to help you out ? Remember 
that. Never forget that. Read it to your children, 
and to your children's children ! And now, most 
thinking people, cast your eyes over my head to 
what the builder, (I beg his pardon, the architect,) 
calls the proscenium. No motto, no slang, no 
popish Latin, to keep the people in the dark. No 
veluii in speculum. Nothing in the dead languages, 
properly so called, for they ought to die, ay and 
be damned to boot ! The Covent Garden man- 

* The old Lyceum Theatre, pulled down by Mr. Arnold. 
That since destroyed by fire was erected on its site. 



32 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

ager tried that, and a pretty business he made of it ! 
When a man says veluti in speculum^ he is called 
a man of letters. Very well, and is not a man 
who cries O. P. a man of letters too ? You ran 
your O. P. against his veluti in speculum ^ and 
pray which beat ? I prophesied that, though 1 
never told any body. I take it for granted, that 
every intelligent man, woman, and child, to whom 
I address myself, has stood severally and respect- 
ively in Little Russell Street, and cast their, 
his, her, and its eyes on the outside of this build- 
ing before they paid their money to view the inside. 
Look at the brickwork, English Audience I Look 
at the brickwork ! All plain and smooth like a 
quaker's meeting. None of your Egyptian pyra- 
mids, to entomb subscribers' capitals. No over- 
grown colonnades of stone, like an alderman's 
gouty legs in white cotton stockings, fit only to use 
as rammers for paving Tottenham Court Road. 
This house is neither after the model of a temple 
in Athens, no, nor a temple in Moorfields, but it 
is built to act English plays in ; and, provided you 
have good scenery, dresses, and decorations, I dare- 



HAMPSHIRE FARJIER's ADDRESS. 33 

say you wouldn't break your hearts if the outside 
were as plain as the pikestaff I used to carry when 
I was a sergeant. Apropos ^ as the French valets 
say, who cut their masters' throats* — apropos, 
a word about dresses. You must, many of you, 
have seen what I have read a description of, Kem- 
ble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, with more gold 
and silver plastered on their doublets than would 
have kept an honest family in butcher's meat and 
flannel from year's end to year's end ! I am in- 
formed, (now mind, 1 do not vouch for the fact,) 
but 1 am informed that all such extravagant idle- 
ness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth 
is to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, 
and a mob cap (as the court parasites call it ; — it 
will be well for them, if, one of these days, they 
don't wear a mob cap — I mean a ivhite cap, with 
a mob to look at them ;) and Macbeth is to appear 
in an honest yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of 
black calamanco breeches. Not iSaZamanca ; no,, 
nor TaJavera neither, my most Noble Marquess ; 

* An allusion to a murder then recently committed on 
Barnes's Terrace. 

a 



34 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

but plain, honest, black calamanco stuff breeches. 
This is right ; this is as it should be. Most think- 
ing people, I have heard you much abused. There 
is not a compound in the language but is strung 
fifty in a rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, 
and hurled in your teeth. You are called the 
mob ; and when they have made you out to be the 
mob, you are called the scum of the people, and the 
dregs of the people. I should like to know how 
you can be both. Take a basin of broth — not 
cheap soup, Mr, Wilberforce — not soup for the 
poor, at a penny a quart, as your mixture of horses' 
legs, brick-dust, and old shoes, was denominated — 
but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton 
broth ; take this, examine it, and you will find — 
mind, I don't vouch for the fact, but I am told — 
you will find the dregs at the bottom, and the scum 
at the top. I will endeavor to explain this to you : 
England is a large earthemvare pipJcin ; John 
Bull is the 6ee/ thrown into it ; taxes are the hot 
water he boils in ; rotten boroughs are the fuel that 
blazes under this same pipkin ; parliament is the 
ladle that stirs the hodge-podge, and sometimes 



HAMPSHIRE farmer's ADDRESS. 35 



But, hold ! I don't wish to pay Mr 



JVewman* a second visit. I leave you better off 
than you have been this many a day : you have a 
good house over your head ; you have beat the 
French in Spain ; the harvest has turned out well ; 
the comet keeps its distance ;-f and red slippers are 
hawked about in Constantinople for next to noth- 
ing ; and for all this, again and again 1 tell you 
you are indebted to Mr. Whithread ! ! ! 

* At that time keeper of Newgate. The present superin- 
tendent is styled governor. 

t A portentous one that made its appearance in the year 
1811 ; in the midst of the war, 

with fear of change 
Perplexing nations. 



36 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



THE LIVING LUSTRES. 



"Jam te juvaverit 
Viros relinquere, 
Doctseque conjugis 
Sinu quiescere." 

Sir T. More. 



I. 

O WHY should our dull retrospective addressesf 
Fall damp as wet blankets on Drury Lane fire ? 

Away with blue devils, away with distresses, 
And give the gay spirit to sparkling desire 1 

* Thomas Moore. 

t *' The Living Lustres appears to us a very fair imitation 
of the fantastic verses which that ingenious person, Mr. Moore, 
indites when he is merely gallant, and, resisting the lures of 
voluptuousness, is not enough in earnest to be tender." — 
Edinburgh Review. 



THE LIVING LUSTRES. 37 

II. 

Let artists decide on the beauties of Druiy, 
The richest to me is when woman is there ; 

The question of houses I leave to the jury ; 
The fairest to me is the house of the fair. 

III. 

When woman's soft smile all our senses bewilders, 
And gilds, while it carves, her dear form on the 
heart. 

What need has New Drury of carvers and gilders ? 
Witli Nature so bounteous, why call upon Art ? 

IV. 

How well would our actors attend to their duties, 

Our house save in oil, and our authors in wit. 
In lieu of yon lamps, if a row of young beauties 
Glanced light from their eyes between us and 
the pit ! 

V. 
The apples that grew on the fruit tree of knowledge 
By woman were plucked, and she still wears the 
prize, 
To tempt us in theatre, senate, or college — 
I mean the love-apples that bloom in the eyes. 



«ra REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

VI. 

There too is the lash which, all statutes controlling, 
Still governs the slaves that are made by the fair ; 

For man is the pupil, who, while her eye 's rolling, 
Is hfted to rapture, or sunk in despair. 

VII. 
Bloom, Theatre, bloom, in the roseate blushes 

Of beauty illumined by a love-breathing smile ! 
And flourish, ye pillars,* as green as the rushes 

That pillow the nymphs of the Emerald Isle ! 

VIII. 

For dear is the Emerald Isle of the ocean. 

Whose daughters are fair as the foam of the wave, 

Whose sons, unaccustomed to rebel commotion, 
Though joyous, are sober — though peaceful, 
are brave. 



* This alludes to two massive pillars of verd antique which 
then flanked the proscenium, but which have since been re- 
moved. Their color reminds the bard of the Emerald Isle, 
and this causes him (more sua) to fly off at a tangent, and 
Hibernicise the rest of the poem. 



THE LIVING LUSTRES. 39 

IX. 

The shamrock their olive, sworn foe to a quarrel, 
Protects from the thunder and lightning of rows ; 

Their sprig of shillelah is nothing but laurel, 
Which flourishes rapidly over their brows. 

X. 

O ! soon shall they burst the tyrannical shackles 
Which each panting bosom indignantly names, 

Until not one goose at the capital cackles 

Against the grand question of Catholic claims. 

XI. 

And then shall each Paddy, who once on the LifFy 
Perchance held the helm of some mackerel-hoy, 

Hold the helm of the state, and dispense in a jiffy 
More fishes than ever he caught when a boy. 

XII. 

And those who now quit their hods, shovels, and 
barrows, 
In crowds to the bar of some alehouse to flock, 
When bred to owr bar shall be Gibbses and GaiTOws, 
. Assume the silk gown, and discard the smock- 
frock, 



40 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

XIII. 

For Erin surpasses the daughters of Neptune, 
As Dian outshines each encircling star ; 

And the spheres of the heavens could never have 
kept tune 
Till set to the music of Erin-go-bragh ! 



THE REBUILDING. 41 



THE REBUILDING. 



BY R. S.' 



" Per audaces nova dithyrambos 

Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur 
Lege solutis." Horat. 



iSpoken by a Glendoveer.} 

1 AM a blessed Glendoveer :f 
'Tis mine to speak, and jours to hear.;|: 

* Robert Southey. 

t For the Glendoveer, and the rest of the dramatis per- 
sonce of this imitation, the reader is referred to the " Curse of 
Kehama." 

+ The Rebuilding is in the name of Mr. Southey, and is one 
of the best in the collection. It is in the style of the Kehama 
of that multifarious author ; and is supposed to be spoken in 
the character of one of his Glendoveers. The imitation of the 
diction and measure, we think, is nearly almost perfect, and 
the descriptions as good as the original. It opens with an 
account of the burning of the old theatre, formed upon the 
pattern of the Funeral of Arvalan." — Edinburgh Review. 



42 



REJECTED ADDRESSES 



Midnight, yet not a nose 
From Tower-hill to Piccadilly snored ! 

Midnight, yet not a nose 

From Indra drew the essence of repose ! 

See with what crimson fury, 

By Indra fann'd, the god of fire ascends the walls 

of Drury 1 

Tops of houses, blue with lead. 

Bend beneath the landlord's tread. 

Master and 'prentice, serving-man and lord, 

Nailor and Tailor, 

Glazier and brazier, 

Through streets and alleys poured — 

All, all abroad to gaze, 

And wonder at the blaze. 

Thick calf, fat foot, and slim knee. 

Mounted on roof and chimney,* 

The mighty roast, the mighty stew 

To see ; 

*This couplet was introduced by the Authors by way of 
bravado, in answer to one who alleged that the English lan- 
guage contained no rhyme to chimney. 



THE REBUILDING. 43 

As if the dismal view 
Were but to them a Brentford jubilee. 

Vainly, all-radiant Surya, sire of Phaeton 

(By Greeks called Apollo)* 

Hollow 

Sounds from thy harp proceed ; 

Combustible as reed, 



* Apollo. A gigantic wooden figure of this deity was 
erected on the roof. The writer (horrescit referens !) is old 
enough to recollect the time when it was first placed there. 
Old Bishop, then one of the masters of Merchant Tailors' 
School, wrote an epigram upon the occasion, which, referring 
to the aforesaid figure, concluded thus : 

" Above he fills up SJiakspeare's place, 
And Shakspeare fills up his below " — 

Very antithetical : hut quaere as to the meaning ? The writer, 
like Pluto, " long puzzled his brain " to find it out, till he 
was immersed " in a lower deep," by hearing Madame de 
Stael say, at the table of the late Lord Dillon, " Buonaparte 
is not a man, but a system." Inquiry was made in the course 
of the evening of Sir James Mackintosh as to what the lady 
meant ? He answered, " Mass ! I cannot tell." Madame de 
Stael repeats this apophthegm in her work on Germany. It 
is prohahly understood there. 



44 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

The tongue of Vulcan licks thy wooden legs : 

From Drury's top, dissevered from thy pegs, 

Thou tumblest, 

Humblest, 

Where late thy bright effulgence shone on high ; 

While, by thy somerset excited, fly 

Ten million 

Billion 

Sparks from the pit, to gem the sable sky. 

Now come the men of fire to quench the fires ; 
To Russell Street see Globe and Atlas run, 
Hope gallops first, and second Sun ; 
On flying heel, 
See Hand-in-hand 
O'ertake the band ! 
View with what glowing wheel 
He nicks 
Phoenix ! 
While Albion scampers from Bridge Street, Black- 
friars — 
Drury Lane ! Drury Lane ! 
Drury Lane ! Drury Lane ! 



THE REBUILDING. 45 

They shout and they bellow again and again. 

All, all in vain ! 

Water turns steam ; 

Each blazing beam 

Hisses defiance to the eddying spout ; 

It seems but too plain that nothing can put it out ! 

Drury Lane ! Drury Lane ! 

See Drury Lane expires 1 

Pent in by smoke-dried beams, twelve moons or 

more, 

Shorn of his ray, 

Surya in durance lay : 

The workmen heard him shout, 

But thought it would not pay, 

To dig hira out. 

When lo ! terrific Yamen, lord of hell, 

Solemn as lead, 

Judge of the dead, 

Sworn foe to witticism, 

By men called criticism. 

Came passing by that way : 

Rise ! cried the fiend, behold a sight of gladness ! 



46 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Behold the rival theatre ! 

I 've set O. P. at her,* 

Who, like a bull-dog bold, 

Growls and fastens on- his hold. 



* 0. P. This personage, who is alleged to have growled 
like a bull-dog, requires rather a lengthened note, for the 
edification of the rising generation. The " horns, rattles, 
drums," with which he is accompanied, are no invention of 
the poet. The new Covent Garden Theatre opened on the 
18th Sept. 1809, when a cry of "Old Prices" (afterwards 
diminished to O. P.) burst out from every part of the house. 
This continued and increased in violence till the 23d, when 
rattles, drums, whistles, and cat-calls, having completely 
drowned the voices of the actors, Mr. Kemble, the stage- 
manager, came forward and said, that a committee of gentle- 
men had undertaken to examine the finances of the concern, 
and that until they were prepared with their report the theatre 
would continue closed. " Name them ! " was shouted from all 
sides. The names were declared, viz. Sir Charles Price, the 
Solicitor-General, the Recorder of London, the Governor of the 
Bank, and Mr. Angerstein. " All shareholders ! " bawled a 
wag from the gallery. In a few days the theatre re-opened ; 
the public paid no attention to the report of the referees, and 
the tumult was renewed for several weeks with even increased 
violence. The proprietors now sent in hired bruisers, to mill 
the refractory into subjection. This irritated most of their 
former friends, and, amongst the rest, the annotator, who 
accordingly wrote the song of " Heigh-ho, says Kemble," 
which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and sung under 
Mr. Kemble's house-windows in Great Russell Street. A 



THE REBUILDING. 47 

The many-headed rabble roar in madness : 

Thy rival staggers : come and spy her 

Deep in the mud as thou art in the mire. 

So saying, in his arms he caught the beaming one. 

And crossing Russel Street, 

He placed him on his feet 

'Neath Covent Garden dome. Sudden a sound, 

As of the bricklayers of Babel, rose : 
Horns, rattles, drums, tin trumpets, sheets of copper. 
Punches and slaps, thwacks of all sorts and sizes, 
From the knobbed bludgeon to the taper switch,* 

dinner was given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the 
Strand, to celebrate the victory obtained by W. Clifford in his 
action against Brandon, the box-keeper, for assaulting him for 
wearing the letters 0. P. in his hat. At this dinner Mr. 
Kemble attended, and matters were compromised by allowing 
the advanced price (seven shillings) to the boxes. The writer 
remembers a former riot of a similar sort at the same theatre 
(in the year 1792,) when the price to the boxes was raised 
from five shilUngs to six. That tumult, however, only lasted 
three nights. 

* " From the knobbed bludgeon to the taper switch." This 
image is not the creation of the poets : it sprang Irom reality. 
The Authors happened to be at the Royal Circus when " God 
save the King" was called for, accompanied by a cry of 
*♦ stand up ! " and " hats off! " An inebriated naval lieutenant 



48 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Ran echoing round the walls ; paper placards 

Blotted the lamps, boots brown with mud the benches ; 

A sea of heads rolled roaring in the pit ; 

perceiving a gentleman in an adjoining box slow to obey the 
call, struck his hat off with his stick, exclaiming, " Take off 
your hat, sir ! " The other thus assaulted proved to be, un- 
luckily for the lieutenant, Lord Camelford, the celebrated 
bruiser and duellist. A set-to in the lobby was the conse- 
quence, where his lordship quickly proved victorious. " The 
devil is not so black as he is painted," said one ol the Authors 
to the other ; " let us call upon Lord Camelford, and telt him 
that we were witnesses of his being first assaulted." The 
visit was paid on the ensuing morning at Lord Camelford's 
lodgings, in Bond-street. Over the fire-place in the drawing- 
room were ornaments strongly expressive of the pugnacity of 
the peer. A long thick bludgeon lay horizontally supported 
by two brass hooks. Above this was placed parallel one of 
lesser dimensions, until a pyramid of weapons gradually arose, 
tapering to a horsewhip : 

'•' Thus all below was strength, and all above was grace." 

Lord Camelford received his visitants with' great civility, 
and thanked them warmly for the call ; adding, that their 
evidence would be material, it being his intention to indict 
the lieutenant for an assault. - " All I can say in return is 
this," exclaimed the peer with great cordiality, " if ever I 
.see you engaged in a row, upon my soul, I '11 stand by you." 
The Authors expressed themselves thankful for so potent an 
ally, and departed. In about a fortnight afterwards Lord 
Camelford was shot in a duel with Mr. Best. 



THE REBUILDING. 49 

On paper wings O. P.'s 

Reclined in lettered ease ; 

While shout and scoff, 

Ya! ya! off! off! 

Like thunderbolt on Suyra's ear-drum fell, 

And seemed to paint 

The savage oddities of Saint 

Bartholomew in hell. 

Tears dimmed the god of light — 

*' Bear me back, Yamen, from this hideous sight ; 

Bear me back, Yamen, 1 grow sick, 

Oh ! bury me again in brick ; 

Shall I on New Drury tremble, 

To be O. P.'d like Kemble ? 

No, 

Better remain by rubbish guarded, 

Than thus hubbubish groan placarded ; 

Bear me back, Yamen, bear me quick, 

And bury me again in brick." 

Obedient Yamen 

Answered "Amen," 



50 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

And did 
As he was bid. 

There lay the buried God, and Time 

Seemed to decree eternity of hme ; 

But pity, like a dew-drop, gently prest 

Almighty Veeshnoo's* adamantine breast ; 

^ ^ He, the preserver, ardent still 

To do whate'er he says he will, 

From South-hill winged his way, 

To raise the drooping lord of day. 

All earthly spells the busy one o'erpowered ; 

He treats with men of all conditions. 

Poets and players, tradesmen and musicians ; 

Nay, even ventures 

To attack the renters. 

Old and new : 

A list he gets 

Of claims and debts, 

And deems naught done, while aught remains to do. 

Yamen beheld, and withered at the sight ; 

* Veeshnoo. The late Mr, Whitbread. 



THE REBUILDING. 51 

Long had he aimed the sunbeam to control, 

For hght was hateful to his soul : 

" Go on !" cried the hellish one, yellow with spite ; 

^' Go on !" cried the hellish one, yellow with spleen, 

'• Thy toils of the morning, like Ithica's queen, 

1 '11 toil to undo every night." 

Ye sons of song, rejoice 1 

Veeshnoo has stilled the jarring elements, 

The spheres hymn music ; 

Again the god of day 

Peeps forth with trembling ray, 

Wakes, from their humid caves, the sleeping Nine, 

And pours at intervals a strain divine. 

" I have an iron yet in the fire," cried Yamen ; 

" The volleyed flame rides in my breath. 

My blast is elemental death ; 

This hand shall tear your paper bonds to pieces ; 

Ingross your deeds, assignments, leases. 

My breath shall every line erase 

Soon as 1 blow the blaze." 

The lawyers are met at the Crown and Anchor, 

And Yamen's visage grows blanker and blanker ; 



52 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

The lawyers are met at the Anchor and Crown, 

And Yamen's cheek is a russety brown ; 

Veeshnoo, now thy work proceeds ; 

The sohcitor reads, 

And, merit of merit ! 

Red wax and green ferret 

Are fixed at the foot of the deeds ! 

Yamen beheld and shivered ; 

His finger and thumb were cramped ; 

His ear by the flee in 't was bitten, 

When he saw by the lawyer's clerk written. 

Sealed and delivered, ^ 

Being first duly stamped. 5 

*' Now for my turn !" the demon cries, and blows 

A blast of sulphur from his mouth and nose. 

Ah ! bootless aim ! the critic fiend. 

Sagacious Yamen, judge of hell, 

Is judged in his turn ; 

Parchment won't burn ! 

His schemes of vengeance are dissolved in air. 

Parchment won't tear ! ! 



THE REBUILDING. 53 

Is it not written in the Himakoot book, 

(That mighty Baly from Kehama took) 

" Who blows on pounce 

Must the Swerga renounce r'^ 

It is ! it is ! Yamen, thine hour is nigh : 

Like as an eagle claws an asp, 

Veeshnoo has caught him in his mighty grasp, 

And hurled him, in spite of his shrieks and his 

squalls, 

Whizzing aloft, like the Temple fountain, 

Three times as high as Meru mountain. 

Which is 

Ninety-nine times as high as St. Paul's. 

Descending, he twisted like Levy the Jew,"** 

Who a durable grave meant 

To dig in the pavement 

Of monument-yard : 

* Levy. An insolvent Israelite who threw himself from 
the top of the Monument a short time before. An inhabitant 
of Monument yard informed the writer, that he happened to 
be standing at his door talking to a neighbor ; and looking 
up at the top of the pillar, exclaimed, " Why, here 's the flag 
coming down." " Flag !" answered the other, " it's a man." 
The words were hardly uttered when the suicide fell within 
ten feet of the speakers. 



54 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

To earth by the laws of attraction he flew, 

And he fell, and he fell 

To the regions of hell ; 

Nine centuries bounced he from cavern to rock, 

And his head, as he tumbled, went nickety-nock, 

Like a pebble in Carisbrook well. 

Now Veeshnoo turned round to a capering varlet, 

Arrayed in blue and white and scarlet, 

And cried, " O ! brown of slipper as of hat ! 

Lend me. Harlequin, thy bat !" 

He seized the wooden sword, and smote the earth ; 

"When lo ! upstarting into birth 

A fabric, gorgeous to behold. 

Outshone in elegance the old. 

And Veeshnoo saw, and cried, " Hail, playhouse 

mine !" 

Then, bending his head, to Surya he said ; 

" Soon as thy maiden sister Di 

Caps with her copper lid the dark blue sky, 

And through the fissures of her clouded fan 

Peeps at the naughty monster man, 



THE REBUILDING. 55 

Go mount yon edifice, 

And shew thy steady face 

In renovated pride, 

More bright, more glorious than before !" 

But ah ! coy Surya still felt a twinge, 

Still smarted from his former singe ; 

And to Veeshnoo replied. 

In a tone rather gruff, 

* No, thank you ! one tumble 's enough !" 



56 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



DRURY'S DIRGE. 



You praise our sires : but though they wrote with tbrce. 
Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse : 
We want their strength, agreed ; but we atone 
For that and more, by sweetness all our own." — Gifford. 



I. 

Balmy Zephyrs, lightly flitting, 
Shade me with your azure wing 

On Parnassus' summit sitting, 
Aid me, Clio, while I sing. 



* The Authors, as in gallantry bound, wish this lady to con- 
tinue anonymous. If Mr. Cruickshank intends any '' scandal 
about Queen Elizabeth," they beg to disavow any share in the 
responsibility. 



DIRGE. 57 



II. 

Softly slept the dome of Drury 

O'er the empyreal crest, 
When Alecto's sister-fury 

Softly slumb'ring sunk to rest. 

III. 

Lo ! from Lemnos limping lamely, 
Lags the lowly Lord of Fire, 

Cytherea yielding tamely 

To the Cyclops dark and dire. 

IV. 

Clouds of amber, dreams of gladness, 
Dulcet joys and sports of youth, 

Soon must yield to haughty sadness ; 
Mercy holds the veil to Truth. 

V. 

See Erostratus the second 
Fires again Diana's fane ; 

By the Fates from Orcus beckoned, 
Clouds envelope Drury Lane. 



58 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

VI. 

Lurid smoke and frank suspicion 
Hand in hand reluctant dance : 

While the God fulfils his mission, 
Chivalry, resign thy lance. 

VIL 

Hark ! the engines blandly thunder, 
Fleecy clouds dishevelled lie, 

And the firemen, mute with wonder, 
On the son of Saturn cry. 

vni. 

See the bird of Ammon sailing, 
Perches on the engine's peak, 

And, the Eagle firemen hailing. 

Soothes them with its bickering beak. 

IX. 

Juno saw, and mad with malice, 
Lost the prize that Paris gave ; 

Jealousy's ensanguined chalice, 
Mantling pours the orient wave. 



drury'sdirge. 59 

X. 

Pan beheld PatroclLis dying, 

Nox to Niobe was turned : 
From Busiris Bacchus flying, 

Saw his Semele inurned. 

XI. 

Thus fell Drury's lofty glory, 

Levelled with the shuddering stones ; 

Mars, with tresses black and gory, 
Drinks the dew of pearly groans. 

XII. 

Hark ! what soft EoHan numbers 

Gem the blushes of the morn ! 
Break, Amphion, break your slumbers, 

Nature's ringlets deck the thorn. 

XIII. 
Ha ! I hear the strain erratic 

Dimly glance from pole to pole ; 
Raptures sweet and dreams ecstatic 

Fire my everlasting soul. 



60 



REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

XIV. 

Where is Cupid's crimson motion ? 

Billowy ecstacy of woe, 
Bear me straight, meandering ocean. 

Where the stagnant torrents flow. 

XV. 

Blood in every vein is gushing, 
Vixen vengeance lulls my heart ; 

See, the Gorgon gang is rushing ! 
Never, never let us part ! 



" ' Drury's Dirge,' by Laura Matilda, is not of the first 
quality. The verses, to be sure, are very smooth, and very 
nonsensical — as was intended ; but they are not so good as 
Swift's celebrated song by a Person of Quality ; and are so 
exactly in the same measure, and on the same plan, that it is 
impossible to avoid making the comparison." — Edinburgh 
Review. 



A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 6! 



A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 



BY W. S. 



" Thus he went on, stringing one extravagance upon another, 
in the style his books of chivah-y had taught him, and 
imitating as near as he could, their very phrase."! 

Don Quixote. 



[ To he spoken by Mr. Kemhle, in a suit of the Black Prince's 
Armour, borrowed from the Tower. 1 

Survey this shield, all bossy bright — 
These cuisses twin behold 1 
Look on my form in armour dight 
Of steel inlaid with gold ; 

* Walter Scott. 

t Sir Walter Scott informed the annotator, that at one time 
he intended to print his collected works, and had pitched upon 
this identical quotation as a motto ; — a proof that sometimes 
great wits jump with little ones. 



62 REJECTED ADDKESSES. 

My knees are stiff in iron buckles, 
Stiff spikes of steel protect my knuckles. 
These once belonged to sable prince, 
Who never did in battle wince ; 
With valour tart as pungent quince, 

He slew the vaunting Gaul. 
Rest there awhile, my bearded lance, 
While from green curtain 1 advance 
To yon foot-lights, no trivial dance,* 
And tell the town what sad mischance 

Did Drury Lane befall. 



On fair Augusta's towers and trees 
Flittered the silent midnight breeze, 
Curling the foliage as it past. 
Which from the moon-tipped plumage cast 



* Alluding to the then great distance between the picture- 
frame, in which the green curtain was set, and the band. For 
St justification of this see nest Address, — *' Johksojc's 
Ghost." 



A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 63 

A spangled light, like dancing spray, 

Then reassumed its still array ; 

When, as night's lamp unclouded hung, 

And down its full effulgence flung, 

It shed such soft and balmy power 

That cot and castle, hall and bower, 

And spire and dome, and turret height, 

Appear'd to slumber in the light. 

From Henry's chapel, Rufus' hall. 

To Savoy, Temple, and St. Paul, 

From Knightsbridge, Pancras, Camden Town, 

To RedrifF Shadwell, Horsleydown, 

No voice was heard, no eye unclosed, 

But all in deepest sleep reposed. 

They might have thought, who gazed around 

Amid a silence so profound, 

It made the senses thrill. 
That 't was no place inhabited, 
But some vast city of the dead — 

All was so huslied and still. 



64 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



As Chaos, which, by heavenly dootxij 
Had slept in everlasting gloom. 
Started with terror and surprise 
When light first flashed upon her eyes — 
So London's sons in nightcap woke, 

In bed-gown woke her dames ; 
For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, 
And twice ten hundred voices spoke — 

" The playhouse is in flames ! " 
And, lo ! where Catharine Street extends, 
A fiery tail its lustre lends 

To every window-pane ; 

Blushes each spout in Martlet Court, 
And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, 
And Covent Garden kennels sport, 

A bright ensanguined drain ; 
Meux's new brewhouse shews the light, 
Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height 

Where patent shot they sell ; 



A. TALE OF DRURY LANE. 65 

The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, 
Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall, 
The ticket-porters' house of call, 
Old Bedlam, close by London Wall,* 
Wright's shrimp and oyster shop withal, 

And Richardson's Hotel. 
Nor these alone, but far and wide, 
Across red Thames's gleaming tide, 
To distant fields the blaze was borne, 
And daisy white and hoary thorn 
In borrowed lustre seemed to sham 
The rose of red sweet Wil-li-am, 
To those who on the hills around 
Beheld the flames from Drury's mound, 

* Old Bedlam at that time stood " close by London Wall." 
It was built after the model of the Tuilleries, which is said to 
have given the French king great offence. In front of it Moor- 
fields extended, with broad gravel walks crossing each other 
at right angles. These the writer well recollects ; and Rivaz. 
an underwriter at Lloyd's, has told him, that he remembered 
when the merchants of London m ould parade these walks on a 
summer evening with their wives and daughters. But now, 
as a punning brother bard sings, 

Moorfields are fields no more. 

5. 



66 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

As from a lofty altar rise, 
It seemed that nations did conspire 
To offer to the god of fire 

Some vast stupendous sacrifice ! 
The summoned firemen woke at call. 
And hied them to their stations all : 
Starting from short and broken snooze, 
Each sought his pond'rous hobnailed shoes, 
But first his worsted hosen plied, 
Plush breeches next, in crimson dyed, 

His nether bulk embraced ; 
Then jacket thick, of red or blue. 
Whose massy shoulder gave to view 
The badge of each respective crew, 

In tin or copper traced. 
The engines thundered through the street, 
Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete, 
And torches glared, and clattering feet 

Along the pavement paced. 
And one, the leader of the band. 
From Charing Cross along the Strand) 
Like stag by beagles hunted hard, 
Ran till he stopped at Vin'gar Yard. 



A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 67 

The burning badge his shoulder bore, 
The belt and oil-skin hat he wore, 
The cane he had, his men to bang. 
Showed foreman of the British gang — 
His name was Higgin bottom. Now 
'T is meet that I should tell you how 

The others came in view : 
The Hand-in-Hand the race begun, 
Then came the Phoenix and the Sun, 
Th' Exchange, where old insurers run, 

The Eagle, where the new ; 
With these came Rumford, Bumford, Cole, 
Robins from Hockly in the Hole, 
Lawson and Dawson, cheek by jowl, 

Crump from St. Giles's Pound : 
Whitford and Mitford joined the train, 
Huggins and Muggins from Chick Lane, 
And Clutterbuck, who got a sprain 

Before the plug was found* 
Hobson and Jobson did not sleep, 
But ah 1 no trophy could they reap, 
For both were in the Donjon Keep 

Of Bridewell's gloomy mound ! 



68 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

E'en Higginbottom now was posed, 
For sadder scene was ne'er disclosed ; 
Without, within, in hideous show, 
Devouring flames resistless glow, 
And blazing rafters downward go, 
And never halloo " Heads below 1'^ 

Nor notice give at all. 
The firemen terrified are slow 
To bid the pumping torrent flow. 

For fear the roof would fail. 
Back, Robins, back ; Crump, stand aloof ! 
Whitford, keep near the walls ! 
Huggins, regard your own behoof. 
For lo ! the blazing rocking roof 
Down, down, in thunder falls 1 
An awful pause succeeds the stroke, 
And o'er the ruins volumed smoke, 
Rolling around its pitchy shroud, 
Concealed them from th' astonished crowd. 
At length the mist awhile was cleared, . 
When, lo ! amid the wreck upreared^ 
Gradually a moving head appeared 

And Eagle firemen knew 



A TALE OF DRURY LANE. 69 

'T was Joseph Muggins, name revered, 

The foreman of their crew. 
Loud shouted all in signs of wo, 
" A Muororins ! to the rescue, ho !" 

And poured the hissing tide : 
Meanwhile the Muggins fought amain. 
And strove and struggled all in vain, 
For, rallying but to fall again, 

He tottered, sunk, and died ! 

Did none attempt, before he fell. 
To succor one they loved so well ? 
Yes, Higginbottom did aspire 
(His fireman's soul was all on fire,) 

His brother chief to save ; 
But ah ! his reckless generous ire 

Served but to share his grave ! 
'Mid blazing beams and scalding streams. 
Through fire and smoke he dauntless broke, 

Where Mus^crins broke before. 
But sulphury stench and boihng drench 
Destroying sight o'erwhelmed him quite, 

He sunk to rise no more. 



70 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Still o'er his head, while Fate he braved, 

His whizzing water-pipe he waved ; 

" Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps, 

You, Clutterbuck, cotne, stir your stumps, 

Why are you in such doleful dumps ? 

A fireman, and afraid of bumps ! — 

What are they fear'd on ? fools 1 'od rot 'em !" 

Were the last words of Higginbottom. 

Peace to his soul ! new prospects bloom, 
And toil rebuilds what fires consume ! 
Eat we and drink we, be our ditty, 
" Joy to the managing committee !" 
Eat we and drink we, join to rum 
Roast beef and pudding of the plum ; 
Forth from thy nook, John Horner, come, 
With bread of ginger brown thy thumb, 

For this is Drury's gay day : 
Roll, roll thy hoop, and twirl thy tops, 
And buy, to glad thy smiling chops, 
Crisp parliament with lolly pops, 

And fingers of the Lady. 



A TALE OP DRURY LANE. 71 

Didst mark, how toiled the busy train, 
From morn to eve, till Drury Lane 
Leaped like a roebuck from the plain ? 
Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again, 

And nimble workmen trod ; 
To realise bold Wyatt's plan 
Rushed many a howling Irishman ; 
Loud clattered many a porter-can, 
And many a ragamuffin clan, 

With trowel and with hod. 
Drury revives ! her rounded pate 
Is blue, is heavenly blue with slate ; 
She " wings the midway air," elate, 

As magpie, crow, or chough ; 
White paint her modish visage smears, 
Yellow and pointed are her ears. 
No pendant portico appears 
Dandino; beneath, for Whitbread's sheai's* 

Have cut the bauble off. 



* Whitbread's shears. An economical experiment of that 
gentleman. The present portico, towards Brydges Street, was 
afterwards erected under the lesseeship of ElUston, whose 



72 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Yes, she exalts her stately head ; 

And, but that solid bulk outspread, 

Opposed you on your onward tread, 

And posts and pillars warranted 

That all was true that Wyatt said. 

You might have deemed her walls so thick, 

Were not composed of stone or brick. 

But all a phantom, all a trick. 

Of brain disturbed and fancy-sick, 

So high she soars, so vast, so quick I 



porti-ait in the Exhibition was thus noticed in the Examiner : 
" Portrait of the great lessee, in his favorite character of Mr. 
Elliston." 



" From the parody of Walter Scott we know not what to 
select — it is all good. The effect of the fire on the town, 
and the description of a fireman in his ofHcial apparel, may be 
quoted as amusing specimens of the misapplication of the style 
and metre of Mr. Scott's admirable romances." — Quarterly 
Revieiv. 

" ' A Tale of Drury,' by Walter Scott, is, upon the whole, 
admirably executed ; though the introduction is rather tame. 
The burning is described with the mighty minstrel's charac- 
teristic love of localities. The catastrophe is described with a 
.spirit not unworthy of the name so venturously assumed by the 
describer." — Edinburgh Review. 



Johnson's ghost. 73 



JOHNSON'S GHOST. 



[Ghost of Dr. Johnson i-ises Jrom trap-door P. S., and 
Ghost of Bos WELL from trap-door O. P. TTie latter 
bows respectfully to the House, and obsequiously to the 
Doctor^s Ghost, and retires.] 

Doctor's Ghost loquitur. 

That which was organized by the moral ability of 
one has been executed by the physical efforts of 

* " Samuel Johnson is not so good : the measure and solem- 
nity of his sentences, in all the limited variety of their struc- 
ture, are indeed imitated with singular skill ; but the diction 
is carricatured in a vulgar and unpleasing degree. To make 
Johnson call a door a ' ligneous barricado,' and its knocker 
and bell its ' frappant and tintinnabulant appendages,' is neither 
just nor humorous : and we are surprised that a writer who 
has given such extraordinary proofs of his talent for finer 
ridicule and fairer imitation, should have stooped to a vein of 
pleasantry so low, and so long ago exhausted ; especially as, 
in other passages of the same piece, he has shewn how well 
qualified he was both to catch and to render the true charac- 
teristics of his original. The beginning, for example, we think 
excellent." — Edinburgh Review. 



74 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

many, and Drury Lane Theatre is now com- 
plete. Of that part behind the curtain, which has 
not yet been destined to glow beneath the brush of 
the varnisher, or vibrate to the hammer of the car- 
penter, little is thought by the public, and little 
need be said by the committee. Truth, however, 
is not to be sacrificed for the accommodation of 
either ; and he who should pronounce that our 
edifice has received its final embellishment would 
be disseminating falsehood without incurring favour, 
and risking the disgrace of detection without parti- 
cipating the advantage of success. 

Professions lavishly effused and parsimoniously 
verified are alike inconsistent with the precepts of 
innate rectitude and the practice of external policy : 
let it not then be conjectured, that because we are 
unassuming, we are imbecile ; that forbearance is 
any indication of despondency, or humility of de- 
merit. He that is the most assured of success will 
make the fewest appeals to favour, and where no- 
thing is claimed that is undue, nothing that is due 
will be withheld. A swelling opening is too often 
succeeded by an insignificant conclusion. Partu- 



Johnson's ghost. 75 

rient mountains have ere now produced muscipular 
abortions ; and the auditor who compares incipient 
grandeur with final vulgarity is reminded of the 
pious hawkers of Constantinople, who solemnly 
perambulate her streets, exclaiming, " In the name 
of the Prophet — figs ! " 

Of many who think themselves wise, and of some 
who are thought wise by others, the exertions are 
directed to the revival of mouldering and obscure 
dramas ; to endeavours to exalt that which is now 
rare only because it was always worthless, and 
whose deterioration, while it condemned it to living 
obscurity, by a strange obliquity of moral percep- 
tion constitutes its title to posthumous renown. 
To embody the flying colours of folly, to arrest 
evanescence, to give to bubbles the globular con- 
sistency as well as form, to exhibit on the stage the 
piebald denizen of the stable, and the half-reason- 
ing parent of combs, to display the brisk locomo- 
tion of Columbine, or the tortuous attitudenising of 
Punch ; — these are the occupations of others, 
whose ambition, limited to the applause of unintel- 
lectual fatuity, is too innocuous for the application 



76 



REJECTED ADDRESSES 



of satire, and too humble for the incitement of 
jealousy. 

Our refectory will be found to contain every spe- 
cies of fruit, from the cooling nectarine and luscious 
peach to the puny pippin and the noxious nut. 
There Indolence may repose, and Inebriety revel ; 
and the spruce apprentice, rushing in at second ac- 
count, may there chatter with impunity ; debarred, 
by a barrier of brick and mortar, from marring that 
scenic interest in others, which nature and educa- 
tion have disqualified him from comprehending 
himself. 

Permanent stage-doors we have none. That 
which is permanent cannot be removed, for, if re- 
moved, it soon ceases to be permanent. What 
stationary absurdity can vie with that ligneous bar- 
ricado, which, decorated with frappant and tintin- 
nabulant appendages, now serves as the entrance 
of the lowly cottage, and now as the exit of a 
lady's bed-chamber ; at one time, insinuating plas- 
tic Harlequin into a butcher's shop, and, at an- 
other, yawning, as a flood-gate, to precipitate the 
Cyprians of St. Giles's into the embraces of Mac- 



Johnson's ghost. 77 

heath. To elude this glaring absurdity, to give to 
each respective mansion the door which the car- 
penter would doubtless have given, we vary ouf 
portal with the varying scene, passing from deal to 
mahogany, and from mahogany to oak, as the op- 
posite claims of cottage, palace, or castle, may 
appear to require. 

Amid the general hum of gratulation which flat- 
ters us in front, it is fit that some regard should be 
paid to the murmurs of despondence that assail us 
in the rear. They, as I have elsewhere expressed 
it, " who live to please," should not have their own 
pleasures entirely overlooked. The children of 
Thespis are general in their censures of the archi- 
tect, in having placed the locality of exit at such 
a distance from the oily irradiators which now 
dazzle the eyes of him who addresses you. I am, 
cries the Queen of Terrors, robbed of my fair pro- 
portions. When the king-killing Thane hints to 
the breathless auditory the murders he means to 
perpetrate, in the castle of Macduff, " ere his pur- 
pose cool ;" so vast is the interval he has to travel 
before he can escape from the stage, that bis pur- 



78 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

pose has even time to freeze. Your condition, 
cries the Mase of Smiles, is hard, but it is cygnet's 
down in comparison widi mine. The peerless 
peer of capers and congees* has laid it down as a 
rule, that the best good thing uttered by the morn- 
ing visitor should conduct him rapidly to the door- 
way, last impressions vying in durability with first. 
But when, on this boarded elongation, it falls to 
my lot to say a good thing, to ejaculate " keep 
moving " or to chant, " hie hoc horum genitivo," 
many are the moments that must elapse, ere I can 
bide myself from public vision in the recesses of O. 
P. or P. S. 

To objections like these, captiously urged and 
querulously maintained, it is time that equity should 
conclusively reply. Deviation from scenic pro- 
priety has only to vituperate itself for the conse- 
quences it generates. Let the actor consider the 
line of exit as that line beyond which he should not 
soar in quest of spurious applause : let him reflect, 
that in proportion as he advances to the lamps, he 

* The celebrated Lord Chesterfield, whose Letters to his 
Son, according to Dr. Johnson, inculcate " the manners of a 
dancing-master and the morals of—," &c. 



Johnson's ghost. 79 

recedes from nature ; that the truncheon of Hotspur 
acquires no additional charm from encountering the 
cheek of beauty in the stage-box, and that the 
bravura of Mandane may produce effect, although 
the throat of her who warbles it should not overhang 
the orchestra. The Jove of the modern critical 
Olympus, Lord Mayor of the theatric sky,* has ex 
cathedra^ asserted, that a natural actor looks upon 
the audience part of the theatre as the third side of 
the chamber he inhabits. Surely, of the third wall 
thus fancifully erected, our actors, should, by ridi- 
cule or reason, be withheld from knockino: their 
heads against the stucco. 

* Lord Mayor of the theatric sky. This alludes to Leigh 
Hunt, who, in The Examiner, at this time kept the actors in 
hot water. Dr. Johnson's argument is, like many of his other 
arguments, specious, but untenable ; that which it defends has 
since been abandoned as impracticable. Mr. Whitbread con- 
tended that the actor was like a poi trait in a picture, and accord- 
ingly placed the green curtain in a gilded frame remote from 
the foot-lights ; alleging that no performer should mar the 
illusion by stepping out of the frame. Dowton was the first 
actor who, like Manfred's ancestor in the Castle of Otranto, 
took the liberty of abandoning the canon. " Don't tell me of 
frames and pictures," ejaculated the testy comedian; "if 
I can't be heard by the audience in the frame, I '11 walk out 
of it !" The proscenium has since been new-modelled, and 
the*actors thereby brought nearer to the uudioncc. 



80 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Time forcibly reminds rae, that all things which 
have a limit must be brought to a conclusion. Let 
me, ere that conclusion arrives, recall to your re- 
collection, that the pillars which rise on either side 
of me, blooming in virid antiquity, like two massy 
evergreens, had yet slumbered in their native quarry, 
but for the ardent exertions of the individual who 
called them into life : to his never-slumbering tal- 
ents you are indebted for whatever pleasure this 
haunt of the muses is calculated to afford. If, in 
defiance of chaotic malevolence, the destroyer of 
the temple of Diana yet survives in the name of 
Erostratus, surely we may confidently predict, that 
the rebuilder of the temple of Apollo will stand 
recorded to distant posterity in that of — Samuel 
Whitbread. 



THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. 81 



THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. 



BY THE HON. W. S. 



Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas. 

Virgil. 



Scene draws, and discovers a Lady asleep on a couch. 
Enter Philander. 
PHILANDER. 
I. 

Sobriety, cease to be sober,f 

Cease, Labor, to dig and to delve ; 

All hail to this tenth of October,. 

One thousand eight hundred and twelve ! 

* William Spencer., 

t Sobriety, &c. The good humor of the poet upon occa- 
sion of this paiody has been noticed in the Preface. " It 's all 

6 



82 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Ha ! whom do my peepers remark ? 

'T is Hebe with Jupiter's jug ; 
O no, 't is the pride of the Park, 

Fair Lady Ehzabeth Mugg. 

n. 

Why, beautiful nymph, do you close 
The curtain that fringes your eye ? 

Why veil in the clouds of repose 

The sun that should brighten our sky ? 



very well for once," said he afterwards, in comic confidence, at 
his villa at Petersham, " but don't do it again. I had been 
almost forgotten when you revived me ; and now all the 
newspapers and reviews ring with, ' this fashionable, trashy 
author.' " The sand and " filings of glass," mentioned in the 
last stanza, are referrable to the well known verses of the poet 
apologising to a lady for having paid an unconscionably long 
morning visit; and where, alluding to Time, he says, 

" All his sands are diamond sparks, 
That glitter as they pass." 

Few men in society have more " gladdened life ' than this 
poet. He now resides in Paris, and may thence make the 
grand tour without an interpreter — speaking, as he does, 
French, Italian, and German, as fluently as English. 



THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. S3 

Perhaps jealous Venus has oiled 

Your hair with some opiate drug, 
Not choosing her charms should be foiled 

By Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 

III. 

But ah ! why awaken the blaze 

Those bright burning-glasses contain. 
Whose lens with concentrated rays 

Proved fatal to old Drury Lane ? 
'T was all accidental, they cry, — 

Away with the flimsy humbug ! 
'T was fired by a flash from the eye 

Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 

IV. 

Thy glance can in us raise a flame, 
Then why should old Drury be free ? 

Our doom and its dome are the same, 
3oth subject to beauty's decree. 



84 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

No candles the workmen consumed. 



When deep in the ruins they dug ; 
Thy flash still their progress illumed, 
Sweet Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 

Thy face a rich fire-place displays : 

The mantel-piece marble — thy brows ; 
Thine eyes are the bright beaming blaze ; 

Thy bib, which no trespass allows, 
The fender's tall barrier marks ; 

Thy tippet 's the fire-quelling rug, 
Which serves to extinguish the sparks 

Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg. 

vr. 

The Countess a lily appears, 

Whose tresses the pearl- drops emboss ; 
The Marchioness, blooming in years, 

A rose-bud enveloped in moss ; 



THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. 85 

But thou art the sweet passion-flower, 

For who would not slavery hug, 
To pass but one exquisite hour 

In the arms of Elizabeth Mugg. 

VII. 

When at court, or some Dowager's rout, 

Her diamond aigrette meets our view, 
She looks like a glow-worm dressed out. 

Or tulips bespangled with dew. 
Her two lips denied to man's suit, 

Are shared with her favorite Pug ; 
What lord would not change with the brute. 

To live with Elizabeth iVIuo-ff ? 

VIII. 

Could the stage be a large vis-a-vis, 
Reserved for the polished and great, 

Where each happy lover might see 
The nymph he adores tete-a-tete ; 



i REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

No longer I 'd gaze on the ground, 
And the load of despondency lug, 

For I 'd book myself all the year round, 
To ride with the sweet Lady Mugg. 

IX. 

Yes, she in herself is a host, 

And if she were here all alone, 
Our house might nocturnally boast 

A bumper of fashion and ton. 
Again should it burst in a blaze. 

In vain would they ply Congreve's plug,^ 
For nought could extinguish the rays 

From the glance of divine Lady Mugg. 



* Congreve's plug. The late Sir William Congreve had 
made a model of Drury Lane Theatre, to which was affixed 
an engine that, in the event of fire, was made to play from 
the stage into every box in the house. The writer, accompa- 
nied by Theodore Hook, went to see the model at Sir William's 
house in Cecil Street. " Now I 'II duck Whitbread !" said 
Hook, seizing the water-pipe whilst he spoke, and sending a 
torrent of water into the brewer's box. 



THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. 87 

X. 

O could I as Harlequin frisk, 

And thou be my Columbine fair, 
My wand should with one magic whisk 

Transport us to Hanover Square : 
St. George's should lend us its shrine, 

The parson his shoulders might shrug, 
But a license should force him to join 

My hand in the hand of my Mugg. 



XI. 

Court-plaster the weapons should tip, 

By Cupid shot down from above, 
Which, cut into spots for thy lip, 

Should still barb the arrows of Love. 
The god who from others flies quick. 

With us should be slow as a slug ; 
As close as a leech he should stick 

To me and Elizabeth Mugor. 



OO REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

XII. 

For Time would, with us, 'stead of sand, 

Put filings of steel in his glass, 
To dry up the blots of his hand, 

And spangle life's page as they pass. 
Since all flesh is grass ere 't is hay,* 

O may I in clover lie snug. 
And when old Time mows me away. 

Be stacked with defunct Lady Mugg ! 

* See Byron, afterwards, in Don Juan : — 

" For flesh is grass, which Time mows down to hay." 

But, as Johnson says of Dryden, " His known wealth was so 
great he could borrow without any impeachment of his credit." 



" * The beautiful Incendiary,' by the Honorable W. Spen- 
cer, is also an imitation of great merit. The flashy, fashion- 
able, artificial style of this writer, with his confident and ex- 
travagant compliments, can scarcely be said to be parodied in 
such lines." — Edinburgh Review. 



FIRE AND ALE, 



FIRE AND ALE. 

BY M. G. L.* 



Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum. 

Virgil. 



My palate is parched with Pierian thirst, 
Away to Parnassus I 'm beckoned ; 
List, warriors and dames, while my lay is rehearsed, 
I sing of the singe of Miss Drury the first. 
And the birth of Miss Drury the second. 



* Matthew Gregory Lewis, commonly called Monk 
Lewis from his once popular romance of that name. He was 
a goodhearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a dis- 
agreeable one — verbose, disputatious, and paradoxical. His 
Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame ; and he 
continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the 
wake of Mrs. Radcliff, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis 
visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro- 



90 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

The Fire King, one day, rather amorous felt ; 

He mounted his hot copper filly ; 
His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt 
Was made of cast iron, for fear it should melt 

With the heat of the copper colt's belly. 

Sure never was skin half so scalding as his ! 

When an infant 't was equally horrid ; 
For the water, when he was baptised, gave a fizz. 
And bubbled and simmered and started off, whizz ! 

As soon as it sprinkled his forehead. 

bitten. He promulgated a new code of laws in the island, for 
the government of his sable subjects : one may serve for a 
specimen : " Any slave who commits murder shall have his 
head shaved, and be confined three days and night in a dark 
room." Upon occasion of printing these parodies, Monk Lewis 
said to Lady H., " Many of them are very fair, but mine is not 
at all like ; they have made me write burlesque, which I 
never do." " You don't know your own talent," answered 
the lady. 

Lewis aptly described himself, as to externals, in the verses 
affixed to his Monk, as having 

" A graceless form and dwarfish stature." 

He had, moreover, large grey eyes, thick features, and an in- 
expressive countenance. In talking, he had a disagreeable 
habit of drawing the fore- finger of his right hand across his 
right eyelid. He affected, in conversation, a sort of dandified, 
drawling tone ; young Harlowe, the artist, did the same. A 



FIREANDALE. 91 

Oh ! then there was glitter and fire in each eye, 

For two Hving coals were the symbols ; 
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry, 
It rattled against them, as though you should try 
To play the piano in thimbles. 

From his nostrils a lava sulphureous flows, 
Which scorches wherever it lingers ; 
A snivelling fellow he 's called by his foes. 
For he can't raise his paw up to blow his red nose, 
For fear it should blister his fingers. 

His wig is of flames curling over his head. 

Well powdered with white smoking ashes ; 
He drinks gunpowder tea, melted sugar of lead, 
Cream of tartar, and dines on hot spice gingerbread. 
Which black from the oven he gnashes. 

foreigner who had but a sUght knowledge of the English lan- 
guage might have concluded, from their cadences, that they 
were httle better than fools — "just a born goose," as Terry 
the actor used to say. Lewis died on his passage homeward 
from Jamaica, owing to a dose of James's powders injudiciously 
administered by " his own mere motion." He wrote various 
plays, with various success : he had an admirable notion of 
dramatic construction, but the goodness of his scenes and in- 
cidents was marred by the badness of his dialogue. 



92 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Each fire nymph his kiss from her countenance 
shields, 

'T would soon set her cheekbone a frying ; 
He spit in the tenter ground near Spital-fields, 
And the hole that it burnt, and the chalk that it yields, 

Make a capital lime-kiln for drying. 

When he opened his mouth, out there issued a blast, 

(Nota bene, I do not mean swearing.) 
But the noise that it made, and the heat that it cast, 
I 've heard it from those who have seen it, surpassed 
A shot manufactory flaring. 

He blazed, and he blazed, as he galloped to snatch 

His bride, little dreaming of danger ; 
His whip was a torch, and his spur was a match, 
And over the horse's left eye was a patch, 
To keep it from burning the manger. 

And who is the housemaid he means to enthral 

In his cinder-producing alliance ? 
'T is Drury Lane Playhouse, so wide, and so tall, 
Who, like other combustible ladies, must fall, 

If she cannot set sparks at defiance. 



FIRE AND ALE. 



93 



On his warming-pan kneepan he clattering rolled, 
And the housemaid his hand would have taken, 
But his hand, like his passion, was too hot to hold, 
And she soon let it go, but her new ring of gold 
All melted, like butter or bacon ! 

Oh I then she looked sour, and indeed well she might, 

For Vinegar Yard was before her ; 
But, spite of her shrieks, the ignipotent knight, 
Enrobing the maid in a flame of gas light. 
To the skies in a sky-rocket bore her. 

Look ! look ! 't is the Ale King, so stately and starch, 
Whose votaries scorn to be sober ; 

He pops from his vat, like a cedar or larch ; 

Brown-stout is his doublet, he hops in his march, 
And froths at the mouth in October. 

His spear is a spigot, his shield is a bung ; 

He taps where the housemaid no more is, 
When lo ! at his magical bidding, upsprung 
A second Miss Drury, tall, tidy, and young, 

And sported in loco sororis. 



94 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Back, lurid in air, for a second regale, 

The Cinder King, hot with desire, 
To Brydges Street hied ; but the Monarch of Ale, 
With uplifted spigot and faucet, and pail. 
Thus chided the Monarch of Fire : 

" Vile tyrant, beware of the ferment I brew ; 

I rule the roast here, dash the wig o' me ! 
If, spite of your marriage with old Drury, you 
Come here with your tinder-box, courting the New, 

I '11 have you indicted for bigamy." 



" ' Fire and Ale,' by M. G. Lewis, exhibits not only a faith- 
ful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that 
singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture 
of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of 
his writings with the character of a sort of farcical horror." — 
Edinburgh Review. 



PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. 95 



PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. 

BY S. T. C* 



Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim 

Credebat libris ; neque si male cesserat, usquam 

Decurrens alio, neque si bene. 

HOR. 



My pensive Public, wherefore look you sad ? 
I had a grandmother, she kept a donkey 
To carry to the mart her crockery-ware, 
And when that donkey looked me in the face, 
His face was sad ! and you are sad, my Public ! 

Joy should be yours : this tenth day of October 
Again assembles us in Drury Lane. 
Long wept my eye to see the timber planks 
That hid our ruins ; many a day I cried, 

* S. T. Coleridge. 



96 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Ah me ! I fear they never will rebuild it ! 
Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, 
As along Charles Street I prepared to walk, 
Just at the corner, by the pastrycook's, 
I heard a trowel tick against a brick. 
I looked me up, and straight a parapet 
Uprose at least seven inches o'er the planks. 
Joy to thee, Drury ! to myself I said : 
*He of Blackfriars' Road, who hymned thy downfal 
In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied 
That flames, like those from prostrate Solyma, 
Would scorch the hand that ventured to rebuild thee, 
Has proved a lying prophet. From that hour. 
As leisure offered, close to Mr. Spring's 
Box-office door, I 've stood and eyed the builders. 
They had a plan to render less their labors ; 
Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder 
With hodded heads, but these stretched forth a pole 
From the wall's pinnacle, they placed a pulley 
Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley ; 

* " He of Blackfriars' Road," viz. the late Rev. Rowland 
Hill, who is said to have preached a sermon congratulating his 
congregation on the catastrophe. 



PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. 97 

To this a basket dangled ; mortar and bricks 
Thus freighted, swung securely to the top, 
And in the empty basket workmen twain 
Precipitate, unhurt, accosted earth. 

Oh ! 't was a goodly sound, to hear the people 
Who watched the work, express their various 

thoughts ! 
While some believed it never would be finished. 
Some, on the contrary, believed it would. 

I 've heard our front that faces Drury Lane 
Much criticised ; they say 't is vulgar brick-work, 
A mimic manufactory of floor-cloth. 
One of the morning papers wished that front 
Cemented like the front in Brydges Street ; 
As it now looks, they call it Wyatt's Mermaid, 
A handsome woman with a fish's tail. 

White is the steeple of St. Brides' in Fleet Street, 
The Albion (as its name denotes) is white ; 
Morgan and Saunders' shop for chairs and tables 
Gleams like a snow-ball in the setting sun ; 
7 



98 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

White is Whitehall. But not St. Brides' in Fleet 

Street, 
The spotless Albion, Morgan, no, nor Saunders, 
Nor white Whitehall, is white as Drury's face. 

*Oh, Mr. Whitbread ! fie upon you, sir ! 
I think you should have built a colonnade ; 
When tender Beauty, looking for her coach, 
Protrudes her gloveless hand, perceives the shower, 
And draws the tippet closer round her throat, 
Perchance her coach stands half a dozen off, 
And, ere she mounts the step, the oozing mud 
Soaks through her pale kid slipper. On the morrow, 
She coughs at breakfast, and her gruff papa 
Cries, *' There you go ! this comes of playhouses !" 
To build no portico is penny wise : 
Heaven grant it prove not in the end pound foolish ! 

Hail to thee, Drury ! Queen of Theatres ! 
What is the Regency in Tottenham Street, 

* " Oh, Mr. "Whitbread!" Sir William Grant, then Master 
of the Rolls, repeated this passage aloud at a Lord Mayor's 
dinner, to the no small astonishment of the writer, who hap- 
pened to sit within ear-shot. 



PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS. 99 

The Royal Amphitheatre of Arts, 

Astley's, Olynipic, or the Sans Pareil, 

Compared with thee ? Yet when I view thee 

pushed 
Back from the narrow street that christened thee, 
I know not why they call thee Drury Lane. 

Amid the freaks that modern fashion sanctions, 
It orrieves me much to see live animals 

o 

Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabhit, 

Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig ; 

Fie on such tricks ! Johnson, the machinist 

Of former Drury, imitated life 

Quite to the life. The elephant in Blue Beard, 

Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis. 

As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba.* 



* " Padmanaba," viz. in a pantomime called Harlequin in 
Padmanaha. This elephant, some years afterwards, was ex- 
hibited over Exeter 'Change, where, the reader will remem- 
ber, it was found necessary to destroy the poor animal by dis- 
charges of musketry. W'hen he made his entrance in the 
pantomime above mentioned, Johnson, the machinist of the 
rival house, exclaimed, " I should be very sorry if I could not 
make a better elephant than that!" Johnson was right : we 
go to the theatre to be pleased with the skill of the imitator, 
and not to look at the reality, 

LOFC. 



100 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Nought born on earth should die. On hackney 

stands 
I reverence the coachman who cries " Gee," 
And spares the lash. When I behold a spider 
Prey on a fly, a magpie on a worm, 
Or view a butcher with horn-handled knife 
Slaughter a tender lamb as dead as mutton, 
Indeed, indeed, I 'm very, very sick ! 

Exit hastily. 



" Mr. Coleridge will not, we fear, be as much entertained 
as we were with his ' Playhouse Musings,' which begin with 
characteristic pathos and simplicity, and put us much in mind 
of the aifecting story of old Poulter's mare." — Quarterly 
Review. 

" ' Playhouse Musings,' by Mr. Coleridge, a piece which 
is unquestionably Lakish, though we cannot say that we 
recognise in it any of the peculiar traits of that powerful and 
misdirected genius whose name it has borrowed* We rather 
think, however, that the tuneful brotherhood will consider it 
as a respectable eclogue." — Edinburgh Review. 



DRURY LANE HUSTINGS. 101 



DRURY LANE HUSTINGS. 



A NEW HALFPENNY BALLAD. 



BY A PIC NIC POET. 



This is the very age of promises : To promise is most courtly 
and fashionable. Performance is a kind of will or testa- 
ment which argues a great sickness in his judgment that 
makes it. — Timon of Athens. 



[To be Sung by Mr. Johnstone, in the character of 

LOONEY M'TWOLTER,] 

I. 

Mr. Jack, your address, says the Prompter to me. 
So I gave him my card — n©, that a'nt it, says he ; 
'T is your pubhc address. Oh ! says I, never fear, 
If address you are bothered for, only look here. 

[Puts on hat affectedly. 

Tol de rol lol, &;c. 



102 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

II. 

/ 

With Drury's for sartin we '11 never have done, 
We 've built up another, and yet there 's but one ; 
The old one was best, yet I 'd say, if I durst. 
The new one is better — the last is the first. 

Tol de rol, Sic. 

III. 

These pillars are called by a Frenchified word, 
A something that 's jumbled of antique and verd ; 
The boxes may show us some verdant antiques, 
Some old harridans who beplaster their cheeks. 

Tol de rol, &c. 

IV. 

Only look how high Tragedy, Comedy, stick. 
Lest their rivals, the horses, should give them a kick ! 
If you will not descend when our authors beseech ye. 
You '11 stop there for life, for I 'm sure they can't 
reach ye. 

Tol de rol, &c. 



DRURY LANE HUSTINGS. 103 

V. 

Each one shilling god within reach of a nod is, 
And plain are the charms of each gallery goddess — 
You, Brandy-faced Moll, don't be looking askew, 
When I talked of a goddess I didn't mean you. 

Tol de rol, &c. 

VI. 

Our stage is so prettily fashioned for viewing, 
The whole house can see what the whole house is 

doing ; 
'T is just like the Hustings, we kick up a bother ; 
But saying is one thing, and doing 's another. 

Tol de rol, he. 

VII. 

We 've many new houses, and some of them rum 
ones. 

But the newest of all is the new House of Com- 
mons ; 

'T is a rickety sort of a bantling, I 'm told, 

It will die of old age when it 's seven years old. 

Tol de rol, &c. 



104 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

VIII. 

As I don't know on whom the election will fall, 
I move in return for returning them all ; 
But for fear, Mr. Speaker, my meaning should miss, 
The house that I wish 'em to sit in is this. 

Tol de rol, kc. 

IX. 

Let us cheer our great Commoner, but for whose aid 
We all should have gone with short commons to 

bed ; 
And since he has saved all the fat from the fire, 
I move that the house be called Whitbread's Entire. 

Tol de rol, &c. 



" ' A New Halfpenny Ballad,' by a Pic Nic Poet, is a good 
imitation of what was not worth imitating — that tremendous 
mixture of vulgarity, nonsense, impudence, and miserable 
puns, which, under the name of humorous songs, rouses our 
polite audiences to a far higher pitch of rapture than Garrick 
or Siddons ever was able to inspire." — Edinburgh Review. 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 105 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 



TRANSLATED BY DR. B. 



Lege, Dick, Lege ! — Joseph Andrews. 



To he recited by the Translator's Son. 

Away, fond dupes ! who, smit with sacred lore, 
Mosaic dreams in Genesis explore, 



* Dr. Busby. This gentleman gave living recitations of 
his translation of Lucretius, with tea and bread-and-butter. 
He sent in a real Address to the Drury Lane Committee, which 
was really rejected. The present imitation professes to be 
recited by the translator's son. The poet here, again, was a 
prophet. A few evenings after the opening of the theatre. 
Dr. Busby sat with his son in one of the stage-boxes. The 
latter, to the astonishment of the audience, at the end of the 
play, stepped from the box upon the stage, with his father's 
real rejected address in his hand, and began to recite it as fol- 
lows : — 

" When energising objects men pursue, 
What are the miracles they cannot do V 



106 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Doat with Copernicus, or darkling stray 
With Newton, Ptolemy, or Tycho Brahe ! 
To you 1 sing not, for I sing of truth, 
Primeval systems, and creation's youth ; 
Such as of old, with magic wisdom fraught, 
Inspired Lucretius to the Latians taught. 

I sing how casual bricks, in airy climb, 
Encountered casual cow-hair, casual lime ; 
How rafters, borne through wondering clouds elate, 
Kissed in their slope blue elemental slate, 
Clasped solid beams in chance-directed fury, 
And gave to birth our renovated Drury. 

Thee, son of Jove ! whose sceptre was confessed, 
Where fair iEolia springs from Tethys' breast ; 



Raymond, the stage- manager, accompanied by a constable, at 
this moment walked upon the stage, and handed away the 
juvenile dilettante performer. 

The doctor's classical translation was thus noticed in one of 
the newspapers of the day, in the column of births : — " Yes- 
terday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr. Busby of a 
still-born Lucretius." 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 107 

Thence on Olympus, 'mid celestials placed, 
God of the Winds, and Ether's boundless waste — 
Thee I Invoke ! Oh puff my bold design, 
Prompt the bright thought, and swell th' harmo- 
nious line ; 
Uphold my pinions, and my verse inspire 
With Winsor's* patent gas, or wind of fire, 
In whose pure blaze thy embryo form enrolled, 
The dark enlightens, and enchafes the cold. 



* " Winsor's patent gas " — at that time in its infancy. The 
first place illumined by it was the Carlton-house side of Pall 
Mall ; the second, Bishopsgate Street. The writer attended a 
lecture given by the inventor : the charge of admittance was 
three shillings, but, as the inventor was about to apply to par- 
liament, members of both houses were admitted gratis. The 
writer and a fellow jester assumed the parts of senators at a 
short notice. " Members of parliament !" was their important 
ejaculation at the door of entrance. " What places, gentle- 
men?" " Old Sarum and Bridge water." " Walk in, gentle- 
men." Luckily, the real Simon Pures did not attend. This 
Pall Mall illumination was further noticed in Horace in 
London. 

" And Winsor lights, with flame of gas, 
Home, to king's place, his mother." 



108 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

But, while I court thy gifts, be mine to shun 
The deprecated prize Ulysses won ; 
Who, sailing homeward from thy breezy shore, 
The prisoned winds in skins of parchment bore. 
Speeds the fleet bark, till o'er the billowy green 
The azure heights of Ithaca are seen ; 
But while with favoring gales her way she wins, 
His curious comrades ope the mystic skins ; 
When,lo ! the rescued winds, with boisterous sweep, 
Roar to the clouds and lash the rocking deep ; 
Heaves the smote vessel in the howling blast, 
Splits the stretched sail, and cracks the tottering 

mast, 
Launched on a plank, the buoyant hero rides, 
Where ebon Afric stems the sable tides, 
While his ducked comrades o'er the ocean fly, 
And sleep not in the whole skins they untie. 

So, when to raise the wind some lawyer tries, 
Mysterious skins of parchment meet our eyes ; 
On speeds the smiling suit — " Pleas of our Lord 
The King " shine sable on the wide record ; 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 109 

Nods the prunella'd bar, attoraeys smile, 

And syren jurors flatter to beguile ; 

Till stript — nonsuited — he is doomed to toss 

In legal shipwreck and redeemless loss ! 

Lucky, if, like Ulysses, he can keep 

His head above the waters of the deep. 

-^olian monarch ! Emperor of Puffs ! 
We modern sailors dread not thy rebuffs ; 
See to thy golden shore promiscuous come 
Quacks for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb ; 
Fools are their bankers — a prolific line, 
And every mortal malady 's a mine. 
Each sly Sangrado, with his poisonous pill, 
Flies to the printer's devil with his bill, 
Whose Midas touch can gild his asses' ears. 
And load a knave with folly's rich arrears. 
And lo ! a second miracle is thine. 
For sloe-juice water stands transformed to wine. 
Where Day and Martin's patent blacking rolled, 
Burst from the vase Pactolian streams of gold ; 
Laugh the sly wizards, glorying in their stealth, 
Quit the black art, and loll in lazy wealth. 



110 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

See Britain's Algerines, the lottery fry, 
Win annual tribute by the annual lie ! 
Aided by thee — but whither do I stray ? — 
Court, city, borough, own thy sovereign sway ; 
An age of puffs an age of gold succeeds, 
And windy bubbles are the spawn it breeds. 

If such thy power, O hear the Muse's prayer ! 
Sv/ell thy loud lungs and wave thy wrings of air ; 
Spread, viewless giant, all thy arms of mist 
Like windmill-sails to bring the poet grist ; 
As erst thy roaring son, with eddying gale. 
Whirled Orithyia from her native vale — 
So, while Lucretian wonders I rehearse, 
Augusta's sons shall patronise my verse. 

I sing of Atoms, whose creative brain, 
With eddying impulse, built new Drury Lane ; 
Not to the labors of subservient man. 
To no young Wyatt appertains the plan — 
We mortals stalk, like horses in a mill. 
Impassive media of atomic will ; 
Ye stare ! then Truth's broad talisman discern — 
'T is Demonstration speaks — attend, and learn ! 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. Ill 

From floating elements in chaos iiurled, 
Self-formed of atoms, sprang the infant world. 
No great First Cause inspired the happy plot, 
But all was matter — and no matter what. 
Atoms, attracted by some law occult, 
Settling in spheres, the globe was the result : 
Pure child of Chance, which still directs the ball, 
As rotatory atoms rise or fall. 
In ether launched, the peopled bubble floats, 
A mass of particles and confluent motes, 
So nicely poised, that if one atom flings 
Its weight away, aloft the planet springs, 
And wings its course through realms of boundless 

space, 
Outstripping comets in eccentric race. 
Add but one atom more, it sinks outright 
Down to the realms of Tartarus and night. 
What waters melt or scorching fires consume, 
In different forms their being reassume ; 
Hence can no change arise, except in name, 
For weight and substance ever are the same. 



112 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Thus with the flames that from old Drury rise 
Its elements primeval sought the skies ; 
There pendulous to wait the happy hour 
When new attractions should restore their power : 
So. in this procreant theatre elate, 
Echoes unborn their future life await ; 
Here embryo sounds in ether lie concealed, 
Like words in northern atmosphere congealed. 
Here many a foetus laugh and half encore 
Clings to the roof, or creeps along the floor ; 
By pufts concipient some in ether flit, 
And soar in bravos from the thundering pit ; 
Some forth on ticket-nights* from tradesmen break, 
To mar the actor they design to make. 



* " Ticket-nights." This phrase is probably unintelligible 
to the untheatrical portion of the community, which may now 
be said to be all the world except the actors. Ticket-nights 
are those whereon the inferior actors club for a benefit : each 
distributes as many tickets of admission as he is able among 
his friends. A motley assemblage is the consequence ; and as 
each actor is encouraged by his own set, who are not in gene- 
ral play-going people, the applause comes (as Chesterfield says 
of Pope's attempts at wit) generally unseasonably, and too 
often unsuccessfully. 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 113 

While seme this mortal life abortive miss, 

Crushed by a groan or strangled by a hiss. 

So, when " Dog's meat " re-echoes through the 

streets, 
Rush sympathetic dogs from their retreats, 
Beam with bright blaze their supphcating eyes, 
Sink their hind-legs, ascend their joyful cries ; 
Each, wild with hope, and maddening to prevail, 
Points the pleased ear, and wags the expectant tail. 

Ye fallen bricks ! in Drury's fire calcined. 
Since doomed to slumber, couched upon the wind. 
Sweet was the hour, when, tempted by your freaks, 
Congenial trowels smoothed your yellow cheeks. 
Float dulcet serenades upon the ear. 
Bends every atom from its ruddy sphere, 
Twinkles each eye, and, peeping from its veil, 
Marks in the adverse crowd its destined male. 
The oblong beauties clap their hands of grit. 
And brick-dust titterings on the breezes flit : 
Then down they rush in amatory race, 
Their dusty bridegrooms eager to embrace. 



114 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Some choose old lovers, some decide for new. 
But each, when fixed, is to her station true. 
Thus various bricks are made, as tastes invite — • 
The red, the gray, the dingy, or the white. 

Perhaps some half-baked rover, frank and free, 
To alien beauty bends the lawless knee, 
But of unhallowed fascinations sick, 
Soon quits his Cyprian for his married brick ; 
The Dido atom calls and scolds in vain, 
No crisp JEneas soothes the widow's pain. 

So in Cheapside, what time Aurora peeps, 
A mingled noise of dustmen, milk, and sweeps, 
Falls on the housemaid's ear : amazed she stands, 
Then opes the door with cinder-sabled hands, 
And " Matches " calls. The dustman, bubbled flat, 
Thinks 't is for him, and doffs his fan-tailed hat ; 
The milkman, whom her second cries assail, 
With sudden sink unyokes the clinking pail ; 
Now louder grown, by turns she screams and weeps — 
Alas ! her screaming only brings the sweeps. 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 115 

Sweeps but put out — she wants to raise a flame, 
And calls for matches, but 't is still the same. 
Atoms and housemaids ! mark the moral true — 
If once ye go astray, no match for you ! 

As atoms in one mass united mix, 
So bricks attraction feel for kindred bricks ; 
Some in the cellar view, perchance, on high, 
Fair chimney chums on beds of mortar lie ; 
Enamoured of the sympathetic clod, 
Leaps the red bridegroom to the laborer's hod ; 
And up the ladder bears the workman, taught 
To think he bears the bricks — mistaken thought ! 
A proof behold : if near the top they find 
The nymphs or broken-cornered or unkind, 
Back to the base, " resulting with a bound," 
They bear their bleeding carriers to the ground ! 

So legends tell along the lofty hill 
Paced the twin heroes, gallant Jack and Jill ; 
On trudged the Gemini to reach the rail 
That shields the well's top from the expectant pail, 



T16 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

When, ah ! Jack falls ; and, rolling in the rear, 
Jill feels the attraction of his kindred sphere : 
Head over heels begins his toppling track, 
Throws sympathetic somersets with Jack, 
And at the mountain's base bobbs plump against 
him, whack ! 

Ye living atoms, who unconscious sit, 
Jumbled by chance in gallery, box, and pit, 
For you no Peter opes the fabled door. 
No churlish Charon plies the shadowy oar ; 
Breathe but a space, and Boreas' casual sweep 
Shall bear your scattered corses o'er the deep. 
To gorge the greedy elements, and mix 
With water, marl, and clay, and stones, and sticks ; 
While, charged with fancied souls, sticks, stones, 

and clay. 
Shall take your seats, and hiss or clap the play. 

O happy age ! when convert Christians read 
No sacred writings but the pagan creed — 
O happy age ! when, spurning Newton's dreams. 
Our poet's sons recite Lucretian themes. 



ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS. 117 

Abjure the idle systems of their youth, 

And turn again to atoms and to truth ; — 

O happier still ! when England's dauntless dam^s, 

Awed by no chaste alarms, no latent shames, 

The bard's fourth book unblushingly peruse. 

And learn the rampant lessons of the stews ! 

All hail, Lucretius ! renovated sage ! 
Unfold the modest mystics of thy page ; 
Return no more to thy sepulchral shelf, 
But live, kind bard — that I may live myself ! 



" In one single point the parodist has failed — there is a 
certain Dr. Busby, whose supposed address is a translation 
called ' Architectural Atoms, intended to be recited by the 
translator's son.' Unluckily, however, for the wag who had 
prepared this fun, the genuine serious absurdity of Dr. Busby 
and his son has cast all his humor into the shade. The doc- 
tor from the boxes, and the son from the stage, have actually 
endeavored, it seems, to recite addresses, which they call 
monologues and unalogues ; and which, for extravagant folly, 
tumid meanness, and vulgar affectation, set all the powers of 
parody at utter defiance." — Quarterly Review. 



118 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

" Of ' Architectural Atoms,' translated by Dr. Busby, we 
can say very little more than that they appear to us to be far 
more capable of combining into good poetry than the few lines 
we were able to read of the learned doctor's genuine address 
in the newspapers. They might pass, indeed, for a very toler- 
able imitation of Darwin." — Edinburgh Review. 



THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. 119 



THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. 



Bounce, Jupiter, bounce!" — O'Hara. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, 

As it is now the universally-admitted, and indeed 
pretty-generally-suspected, aim of Mr. Whitbread 
and the infamous, blood-thirsty, and, in fact, illib- 
eral faction to which he belongs, to burn to the 
ground this free and happy Protestant city, and es- 
tablish himself in St. James's Palace, his fellow 
committee-men have thought it their duty to watch 
the principles of a theatre built under his auspices. 
The information they have received from undoubted 
authority — particularly from an old fruit-woman 
who has turned king's evidence, and whose name, 
for obvious reasons we forbear to mention, though 
* Morningc Post. 



120 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

we have had It some weeks in our possession — has 
induced them to introduce various reforms — not 
such reforms as the vile faction clamor for, meaning 
thereby revolution, but such reforms as are neces- 
sary to preserve the glorious constitution of the only 
free, happy, and prosperous country now left upon 
the face of the earth. From the valuable and au- 
thentic source above alluded to, we have learnt 
that a sanguinary plot has been formed by some 
united Irishmen, combined with a gang of Luddites, 
and a special committee sent over by the Pope at 
the instigation of the beastly Corsican fiend, for 
destroying all the loyal part of the audience on the 
anniversary of that deeply-to-be-abhorred and high- 
ly-to-be-blamed stratagem, the Gun-powder Plot, 
which falls this year on Thursday the fifth of No- 
vember. The whole is under the direction of a 
delegated committee of O. P.'s whose treasonable 
exploits at Covent Garden you all recollect, and 
all of whom would have been hung from the chan- 
deliers at that time, but for the mistaken lenity of 
government. At a given signal, a well known O. 
P. was to cry out from the gallery, ^' Nosey ! Mu- 



THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. 121 

sic !" whereupon all the O. P.'s were to produce 
from their inside-pockets a long pair of shears, 
edged with felt, to prevent their making any noise, 
manufactured expressly by a wretch at Birming- 
ham, one of Mr. Brougham's evidences, and now 
in custody. With these they were to cut off the 
heads of all the loyal N. P.'s in the house, without 
distinction of sex or age. At the signal, similarly 
given, of " Throw him over !" which it now ap- 
pears always alluded to the overthrow of our never- 
sufficiently-enough-to-be-deeply-and-universally-to- 
be-venerated constitution, all the heads of the N. 
P.'s were to be thrown at the fiddlers, to prevent 
their appearing in evidence, or perhaps as a false 
and illiberal insinuation that they have no heads of 
their own. All that we know of the further designs 
of these incendiaries is, that they are by-a-great- 
deal-too much too-horrible-to-be-mentioned. 

The Manager has acted with his usual prompt- 
itude on this trying occasion. He has contracted 
for 300 tons of gunpowder, which are at this mo- 
ment placed in a small barrel under the pit ; and a 
descendant of Guy Faux, assisted by Col. Con- 



122 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

greve, has undertaken to blow up the bouse, when 
necessary, in so novel and ingenious a manner, that 
every O. P. shall be annihilated, while not a whis- 
ker of the N. P.'s shall be singed. This strikingly 
displays the advantages of loyalty and attachment 
to government. Several other hints have been 
taken from the theatrical regulations of the not-a- 
bit-the-less-on-that-account-to-be-universally-exe- 
crated-monster Bonaparte. A park of artillery, 
provided with chain-shot, is to be stationed on the 
stage, and play upon the audience, in case of any 
indication of misplaced applause or popular dis- 
content ; (which accounts for the large space be- 
tween the curtain and the lamps ;) and the public 
will participate our satisfaction in learning that the 
indecorous custom of standing up with the hat on is 
to be abohshed, as the Bow-street officers are pro- 
vided with das[2rers, and have orders to stab all such 
persons to the heart, and send their bodies to Sur- 
geons' Hall. Gentlemen who cough are only to 
be slightly wounded. Fruit-women bawling '^ Bill 
of the play !" are to be forthwith shot, for which 
purpose soldiers will be stationed in the slips, and 



THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL. 123 

ball-cartridge is to be served out with the lemon- 
ade. If any of the spectators happen to sneeze or 
spit, they are to be transported for life ; and any 
person who is so tall as to prevent another seeing, 
is to be drasjgred out and sent on board the tender, 
or, by an instrument taken out of the pocket of 
Procrustes, to be forthwith cut shorter, either at the 
head or foot, according as his own convenience 
may dictate. 

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, have the committee, 
through my medium, set forth the not-in-a-hurry- 
to-be paralleled plan they have adopted for pre- 
serving order and decorum within the walls of their 
magnificent edifice. Nor have they, while atten- 
tive to their own concerns, by any means overlook- 
ed those of the cities of London and Westminster. 
Finding, on enumeration, that they have with a with- 
two-hands-and-one-tongue-to-be-applauded liberal- 
ity, contracted for more gunpowder than they want, 
they have parted with the surplus to the mattock- 
carrying and hustings-hammering high bailiff of 
Westminster, who has, with his own shovel, dug a 
large hole in the front of the parish-church of St. 



124 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Paul, Covent Garden, that, upon the least symp- 
tom of ill-breeding in the mob at the general elec- 
tion, the whole of the market nmj be blown into 
the air. This, ladies and gentlemen, may at first 
make provisions rise, but we pledge the credit of 
our theatre that they will soon fall again, and peo- 
ple be supplied, as usual, with vegetables, in the in- 
general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on - Satur- 
day-night-lighted-up-with-lamps market of Covent 
Garden. 

I should expatiate more largely on the other ad- 
vantages of the glorious constitution of these by- 
the-whole-of- Europe-envied reahns, but I am called 
away to take an account of the ladies, and other 
artificial flowers at a fashionable rout, of which a 
full and particular account will hereafter appear. 
For the present, my fashionable intelligence is 
scanty, on account of the opening of Drury Lane : 
and the ladies and gentlemen who honor me with 
their attention will not be surprised if they find 
nothing under my usual head ! ! 



THE THEATRE, 12' 



THE THEATRE. 



BY THE REV. G. C.^ 



' Nil intentatum nostri liquere poelce, 
Nee minimum meruere decus, vestigia Grajca 
Ausi deserere, at celebrare doraestica facta." 

HOR. 



A PREFACE OF APOLOGIES. 

If the following poem should be fortunate enough 
to be selected for the opening address, a few words 
of explanation niay be deemed necessary, on my 
part, to avert invidious misrepresentation. The 
animadversion I have thought it right to maKe on 

* The Rev. George Crabbe. The writer's first inter- 
view with this poet, who may be designated Pope in worsted 
stockings, took place at William Spencer's villa at Petersham, 
close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish pond, though 
it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a jet d'eau 
like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of 
his satirist, exclaimed, with a good-humored laugh, " Ah ! my 



126 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

the noise created by tuning the orchestra, will, I 
hope, give no lasting remorse to any of the gentle- 
men employed in the band. It is to be desired 
that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, 

old enemy, how do you do ?" In the course of conversation, 
he expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London : 
adding, " In my own village they think nothing of me." The 
subject happening to he the inroads of time upon beauty, the 
writer quoted the follow ing lines : — 

" Six years had passed, and forty ere the six, 
When Time began to play his usual tricks. 
My locks, once comely in a virgin's sight, 
Locks of pure brown, now felt th' encroaching white ; 
Gradual each day I liked ray horses less. 
My dinner more — I learnt to play at chess." 
" That 's very good !" cried the bard ; — " whose is it .'" 
" Your own." " Indeed ! hah ! v/ell, I had quite forgotten 
it," Was this afTectation or was it not ? In sooth, he seemed 
to push simplicity to puerility. This imitation contained in 
manuscript the following lines, after describing certain Sunday 
newspaper critics who were supposed to be present at a new 
play, and who were ra hjr heated in their politics: — 
" Hard is his task who edits — thankless job ! 
A Sunday journal for the factious mob : 
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest. 
He gives to turbulence the day of rest 5 
Condemned, this week, rash rancor to instil, 
Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will : 
AliKe undone or if he praise or rail 
(For this affects his safety, that his sale,) 
He sinks at last, in luckless limbo set 
if loud for hbel, and if dumb for debt." 



THE THEATRE. 127 

and strike off at once. This would be an accomo« 
dation to many well-meaning persons who frequent 
the theatre, who, not being blest with the ear of St. 
Cecilia, mistake the tuning for the overture, and 
think the latter concluded before it is begun. 



one fiddle will 



Give, half ashamed, a tiny flourish still," 

was originally written '' one hautboy will ;" but, 
having providentially been informed, when this 
poem was upon the point of being sent off, that 
there is but one hautboy in the band, I averted the 
storm of popular and managerial indignation from 
the head of its blower : as it now stands, " one fid- 
dle " among many, the faulty individual will, i 

They were, however, never printed ; being, on retiection, 
considered too serious for the occasion. 

It is not a little extraordinary that Crabbe, who could write 
with such vigor, should descend to such lines as the following ; 

'' Something had happened wrong about a bill 
Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill 5 
So, to amend it, I was told to go 
And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co." 

Surely " Emanuel Jennings," compared with the above, 
rises to sublimity. 



128 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

hope, escape detection. The story of the flying 
play-bill is calculated to expose a practice n^.uch 
too common, of pinning play-bills to cushions in- 
securely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them 
at all. If these hnes save one play-bill only from 
the fate I have recorded, 1 shall not deem my labor 
ill employed. The concluding episode of Patrick 
Jennings glances at the boorish fashion of wearing 
the hat in the one-shilling gallery. Had Jennings 
thrust his between his feet at the commencement of 
the play, he might have leaned forward with im- 
punity, and the catastrophe I relate would not have 
occurred. The line of handkerchiefs formed to 
enable him to recover his loss, is purposely so 
crossed in texture and materials as to mislead the 
reader in respect to the real owner of any one of 
them. For in the satirical view of life and man- 
ners which I occasionally present, my clerical pro- 
fession has taught me how extremely improper it 
would be, by any allusion, however slight, to give 
any uneasiness, however trivial, to any individual, 
however foolish or wicked. G. C. 



THE THEATRE, 



129 



THE THEATRE. 

Interior of a Theatre described. — Pit gradually fills. — The 
Check-taker. — Pit full. — The Orchestra tuned. — One 
Fiddle rather dilatory. — Is reproved — and repents. — 
Evolutions of a Play-bill. — Its final Settlement on the 
Spikes. — The Gods taken to task — and why. — Motley 
Group of Play-goers. — Holywell Street, St. Pancras. — 
Emanuel Jennings binds his Son apprentice — not in Lon- 
don — and why. — Episode of the Hat. 



'T IS sweet to view, from half-past five to six, 
Our long wax-candles, with short cotton wicks, 
Touched by the lamplighter's Promethean art, 
Start into light, and make the lighter start ; 
To see red Phoebus through the galler}^-pane 
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane ; 
While gradual parties fill our widened pit, 
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit. 

At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease, 
Distant or near, they settle where they please ; 
9 



130 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

But when the multitude contracts the span, 
And seats are rare, they settle where they can. 

Now the full benches to late-comers doom 
No room for standing, miscalled standing room. 

Hark ! the check-taker moody silence breaks, 
And bawling '' Pit full ! " gives the check he takes ; 
Yet onward still the gathering numbers cram, 
Contending crowders shout the frequent damn, 
And all is bustle, squeeze, row^ jabbering, and jam. 

See to their desks Apollo's sons repair — 
Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair ! 
In unison their various tones to tune, 
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon ; 
In soft vibration sighs the wdiispering lute, 
Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute. 
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp. 
Winds the French-horn, and twangs the tingling 

harp ; 
Till, like great Jove, the leader, fingering in, 
Attunes to order the chaotic din. 



THE THEATRE. 13T 

Now all seems hushed — but, no, one fiddle will 
Give half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still. 
Foiled in his crash, the leader of the clan 
Reproves with frowns the dilatory man : 
Then on his candlestick thrice taps his bow, 
Nods a new signal, and away they go. 

Perchance, while pit and gallery cry, " Hats off!" 
And awed Consumption checks his chided cough, 
Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love 
Drops, 'reft of pin, her play-bill from above : 
Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap, 
Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap ; 
But, wiser far than he, combustion fears. 
And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers ; 
Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl. 
It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl ; 
Who from his powdered pate the intruder strikes, 
And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes. 

Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues? 
Who 's that calls ^' Silence !" with such leathern 

lungs ? 
He who, in quest of quiet, " Silence 1" hoots, 
Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes. 



132 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

What various swains our motley walls contain ! 
Fashion from Moorfields, honor from Chick Lane ; 
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort, 
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court ; 
From the Haymarket canting rogues In grain, 
Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane ; 
The lottery-cormorant, the auction shark, 
The full-price master, and the half-price clerk ; 
Boys who long linger at the gallery-door. 
With pence twice five — they want but twopence 

more ; 
Till some Samaritan the two-pence spares, 
And sends them jumping up the gallery-stairs. 

Critics we boast who ne'er their malice balk, 
But talk their minds — we wish they'd mind their 

talk: 
Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live — 
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give ; 
Jews from St. Mary Axe, for jobs so wary, 
That for old clothes they 'd even axe St. Mary ; 
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate, 
Lax in their gaiters, laxer In their gait ; 



THE THEATRE. 133 

Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse 
With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house. 

Yet here, as elsewhere, Chance can joy bestow. 
Where scowling fortune seemed to threaten woe. 

John Richard William Alexander Dwyer 
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire ; 
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues, 
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs's shoes. 
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy 
Up as a corn-cutter — a safe employ ; 
In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred 
(At number twenty-seven, it is said,) 
Facing the pump, and near the Granby's Head : 
He would have bound him to some shop in town. 
But with a premium he could not come down. 
Pat was the urchin's name — a red haired youth, 
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth. 

Silence, ye gods ! to keep your tongues in awe. 
The Muse shall tell an accident she saw. 



134 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat, 
But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat : 
Down from the gallery the beaver flew, 
And spurned the one to settle in the two. 
How shall he act ? Pay at the gallery-door 
Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four ? 
Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait. 
And gain his hat again at half-past eight ? 
Now, while his fears anticipate a thief, 
John Mullins whispers, " Take my handkerchief" 
" Thank you," cries Pat ; "but one won't make a 

line." 
*' Take mine," cried Wilson ; and cried Stokes, 

" Take mine." 
A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties. 
Where Spitalfields with real India vies. 
Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clue. 
Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue, 
Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. 
George Green below, with palpitating hand. 
Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band — 



THE THEATRE. 135 



Up soars the prize 1 The youth, with joy unfeigned. 
Regained the felt, and felt what he regained ; 
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat 
Made a low bow, and touched the ransomed hat. 



" ' The Theatre,' hy the Rev. G. Crabbe, we rather think, 
is the best piece in the collection. It is an exquisite and most 
masterly imitation, not only of the peculiar style, but of the 
taste, temper, and manner of description of that most original 
author ; and can hardly be said to be in any respect a carica- 
ture of that style or manner — except in the excessive profu- 
sion of puns and verbal jingles — which, though undoubtedly 
to be ranked among his characteristics, are never so thick sown 
in his original works as in this admirable imitation. It does 
not aim, of course, at any shadow of his pathos or moral sub- 
limity, but seems to us to be a singularly faithful copy of his 
passages of mere description." — Edinburgh Review. 



136 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF THE NEW 
DRURY LANE THEATRE.* 



Gentlemen, 

Happening to be wool-gathering at the foot of 
Mount Parnassus, I was suddenly seized with a 
violent travestie in the head. The first symptoms 
1 felt were several triple rhymes floating about my 
brain, accompanied by a singing in my throat, 
which quickly communicated itself to the ears of 
every body about me, and made me a burthen to 
ray friends and a torment to Doctor Apollo ; three 
of whose favorite servants — that is to say, Mac- 

* " We come next to three ludicrous parodies — of the story 
of The Stranger, of George Barnwell, and of the dagger- 
scene in Macbeth, under the signature of Monius Medlar. 
They are as good, we think, as that sort of thing can be, and 
remind us of the happier efforts of Cohnan, whose less suc- 
cessful fooleries are professedly copied in the last piece in the 
volume." — Edinburgh Review. 



MACBETH TRAVESTIE. 137 

beth, his butcher ; Mrs. Haller, his cook ; and 
George Barnwell, his book-keeper — I waylaid in 
one of my fits of insanity, and mauled after a very 
frightful fashion. In this woful crisis, 1 accident- 
ally heard of your invaluable New Patent Hissing 
Pit, which cures every disorder incident to Grub 
Street. I send you inclosed a more detailed spe- 
cimen of my case : if you could mould it into the 
shape of an address, to be said or sung on the 
first night of your performance, 1 have no doubt 
that I should feel the immediate effects of your in- 
valuable New Patent Hissing Pit, of which they 
tell me one hiss is a dose. 
I am, &ic. 

MoMus Medlar. 



138 REJECTED ADDRESSES 



CASE, No. I. 
MACBETH. 

[Enter Macbeth, in a red nightcap. Vag-eJ oil owing 
with a torch.} 

Go, boy, and thy good mistress tell 

(She knows that my purpose is cruel,) 
1 'd thank her to tingle her bell 

As soon as she 's heated my gruel. 
Go, get thee to bed and repose — 

To sit up so late is a scandal ; 
But ere you have ta'en off your clothes, 
Be sure that you put out that candle. 

Ri fol de rol tol de rol lol. 

My stars, in the air here 's a knife ! — 

I 'm sure it can not be a hum ; 
I '11 catch at the handle, add's life ! 

And then 1 shall not cut my thumb. 



MACBETH TRAVESTIE. 139 

I Ve got him ! — no, at him again I 

Come, come, I 'm not fond of these jokes ; 

This must be some blade of the brain — 
Those witches are given to hoax. 

I 've one in my pocket, 1 know, 

My wife left on purpose behind her ; 
She bought this of Teddy-high-ho, 

The poor Caledonian grinder. 
I see thee again ! o'er thy middle 

Large drops of red blood now are spiUed, 
Just as much as to say, diddle diddle, 

Good Duncan, pray come and be killed. 

It leads to his chamber, I swear ; 

I tremble and quake every joint — 
No dog at the scent of a hare 

Ever yet made a cleverer point. 
Ah, no 1 't was a dagger of straw — 

Give me blinkers, to save me from starting ; 
The knife that 1 thought that I saw, 

Was nought but my eye, Betty Martin. 



140 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

Now o'er this terrestrial hive 

A Hfe paralytic is spread ; 
For while the one half is alive, 

The other is sleepy and dead. 
King Duncan, in grand majesty, 

Has got my state-bed for a snooze ; 
I Ve lent him my slippers, so I 

May certainly stand in his shoes. 

Blow softly, ye murmuring gales ! 

Ye feet, rouse no echo in walking ! 
For though a dead man tells no tales, 

Dead walls are much given to talking. 
This knife shall be in at the death — 

I '11 stick him, then off safely get ! 
Cries the world, this could not be Macbeth, 

For he 'd ne'er stick at any thing yet. 

Hark, Hark ! 't is the signal, by goles ! 

It sounds like a funeral knell ; 
O, hear it not, Duncan ! it tolls 

To call thee to heaven or hell. 



MACBETH TRAVESTIE. 141 

Or if you to heaven won't fly, 

But rather prefer Pluto's ether, 
Only wait a few years till I die, 

And we '11 go to the devil together. 

Ri fol de rol, &;c. 



142 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



CASE, No. II. 

» 

THE STRANGER. 

Who has e'er been at Drury must needs know the 

Stranger, 
A waning old Methodist, gloomy and wan, 
A husband suspicious — his wife acted Ranger, 
She took to her heels, and left poor Hypocon. 
Her martial gallant swore that truth was a libel, 
That marriage was thraldom, elopement no sin ; 
Quoth she, I remember the words of my Bible — 
My spouse is a Stranger, and I '11 take him in. 

With my sentimentalibus lachrymae roar'em. 

And pathos and bathos delightful to see ; 

And chop and change ribs, a-la-mode Germano- 
rum. 

And high diddle ho diddle, pop tweedle dee. 



STRANGER TRAVESTIE]. 143 

To keep up her dignity no longer rich enough, 
Where was her plate ? — why, 't was laid on the 

shelf ; 
Her land fuller's earth, and her great riches kitch- 
en-stuff — 
Dressing the dinner instead of herself. 
No longer permitted in diamonds to sparkle, 
Now plain Mrs. Haller, of servants the dread, 
With a heart full of grief, and a pan full of charcoal, 
She lighted the company up to their bed. 

Incensed at her flight, her poor Hubby in dudgeon 
Roamed after his rib in a gig and a pout, 
Till, tired with his journey, the peevish curmudgeon 
Sat down and blubbered just like a church spout. 
One day, on a bench as dejected and sad he laid, 
Hearing a squash, he cried, Damn it, what 's that ? 
'T was a child of the Count's, in whose service 

lived Adelaide, 
Soused in the river, and squalled like a cat. 

Having drawn his young excellence up to the bank, it 
Appeared that himself was all dripping, 1 swear ; 



144 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

No wonder he soon became dry as a blanket, 
Exposed as he was to the Count's son and heir. 
Dear sir, quoth the Count, in reward of your valor, 
To show that my gratitude is not mere talk, ^ 
You shall eat a beefsteak with my cook, Mrs. Haller, 
Cut from the rump with her own knife and fork. 

Behold, now the Count gave the Stranger a dinner, 
With gunpowder-tea, which you know brings a ball. 
And, thin as he was, that he might not grow thinner, 
He made of the stranger no stranger at all. — 
At dinner fair Adelaide brought up a chicken — 
A bird that she never had met with before ; 
But, seeing him, screamed, and was carried off 

kicking. 
And he banged his nob 'gainst the opposite door. 

To finish my tale without roundaboutation. 
Young master and missee besieged their papa ; 
They sung a quartetto in grand blubberation — 
The Stranger cried, Oh ! Mrs. Haller cried. Ah ! 
Though pathos and sentiment largely are dealt in, 
I have no good moral to give in exchange j 



STRANGER TRAVESTIE. 145 

For though she, as a cook, might be given to melt- 
ing, 
The Stranger's behavior was certainly strange, 
With his sentimentalibus lachrymae roar'em, 
And pathos and bathos delightful to see, 
And chop and change ribs, a-la-mode Germano- 
rum, 
And high diddle ho diddle, pop tweedle dee. 



10 



146 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



CASE, No. III. 

GEORGE BARNWELL. 

George Barnwell stood at the shop-door, 
A customer hoping to find, sk ; 
His apron was hanging before, 
But the tail of his coat was behind, sir. 
A lady, so painted and smart, 
Cried, Sir, 1 've exhausted my stock o' late, 
I Ve got nothing left but a groat — 
Could you give me four penn'orth of chocolate ? 
Rum ti, &ic. 

Her face was rouged up to the eyes, 
Which made her look prouder and prouder ; 
His hair stood on end with surprise. 
And hers with pomatum and powder. 



GEORGE BARNWELL TRAVESTIE. 147 

The business was soon understood ; 
The lady, who wished to be more rich. 
Cries, Sweet sir, my name is Milwood, 
And 1 lodge at the Gunner's in Shoreditch. 
Rum ti, he. 



Now nightly he stole out. good lack ! 
And into her lodging would pop, sir ; 
And often forgot to come back. 
Leaving master to shut up the shop, sir. 
Her beauty his wits did bereave — 
Determined to be quite the crack O, 
He lounged at the Adam and Eve, 
And called for his frin and tobacco. 

o 

Rum ti, &c. 



And now — for the truth must be told, 
Though none of a 'prentice should speak ill 
He stole from the till all the gold. 
And ate the lump-sugar and treacle. 



148 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

In vain did his master exclaim, 
Dear George, don't engage with that dragon 
She '11 lead you to sorrow and shame, 
And leave you the devil a ragjon 

Your rum ti, &z;c. 



In vain he entreats and implores 
The weak and incurahle ninny, 
So kicks him at last out of doors, 
And Georgy soon spends his last guinea. 
His uncle, whose generous purse 
Had often relieved him, as I know. 
Now finding him grow worse and worse, 
Refused to come down with the rhino. 
Rum ti, SiC. 



Cried Milwood, whose cruel heart's core 
Was so flinty that nothing could shock it, 
If you mean to come here any more, 
Pray comxC with more cash in your pocket : 



GEORGE BARNWELL TRAVESTTE. 149 

Make nunky surrender his dibs, 
Rub his pate with a pair of lead towels, 
Or stick a knife into his ribs — 
I 'II warrant he '11 then shew some bowels. 
Rum ti, he. 



A pistol he got from his love — 
'T was loaded with powder and bullet ; 
He trudged off to Camberwell Grove, 
But wanted the courage to pull it. 
There 's nunky as fat as a hog, 
While I am as lean as a lizard ; 
Here 's at you, you stingy old dog ! — 
And he whips a long knife in his gizzard. 
Rum ti, &;c. 



All you who attend to my song, 

A terrible end of the farce shall see, 

If you join the inquisitive throng 

That followed poor George to the JMarshalsea. 



150 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

If Mihvood were here, dash my wigs, 
Quoth he, 1 would pummel and lam her well ; 
Had I stuck to my pruins and figs, 
I ne'er had stuck nunky at Camberwell. 
Rum ti, he. 



Their bodies were never cut down ; 
For granny relates with amazement, 
A witch bore 'em over the town, 
And hung them on Thorowgood's casement. 
The neighbors, I 've heard the folks say, 
The miracle noisily brag on ; 
And the shop is to this very day, 
The sign of the George and the Dragon. 
Rum ti, he. 



APOTHEOSIS. 151 



PUNCH'S APOTHEOSIS. 



BY T. H.^ 



Rhymes the rudders are of verses, 

With which, like ships, they steer their courses." 

HUDIBRAS. 



Scene draws, and discovers Punch on a throne, surrounded 
by Lear, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Othello, 
George Barnwell, Hamlet, Ghost, Macheath, 
Juliet, Friar, Apothecary, Romeo, and Fal- 
staff, — Punch descends and addresses them in the 
following 

RECITATIVE. 

As manager of horses Mr. Merryman Is, 

So I with you am master of the ceremonies — 

* Theodore Hook, at that time a very young man, and the 
companion of the annotator in many wild frolics. The clever- 
ness of his subsequent prose compositions has cast his early 



152 REJECTED ADDRESSES. 

These grand rejoicings. Let me see, bow name 

ye 'em? 
Ohj in Greek lingo 't is E-pi-thalamium. 
October's tenth it is, toss up each hat to-day, 
And celebrate with shouts our opening Saturday ! 
On this great night 't is settled by our manager, 
That we, to please great Johnny Bull, should plan 

a jeer, 
Dance a bang-up theatrical cotillon. 
And put on tuneful Pegasus a pillion ; 
That every soul, whether or not a cough he has. 
May kick like Harlequin, and sing like Orpheus. 
So come, ye pupils of Sir John Gallini,* 
Spin up a tetotum like Angiolini ;f 
That John and Mrs. Bull, from ale and tea-houses, 
May shout huzza for Punch's Apotheosis ! 

stage songs into oblivion. This parody -vvas, in the second 
edition, transferred from Colman to Hook. 

* The Director of the Opera House. 

t At that time the chief dancer at this establishment. 



punch's apotheosis. 153 

They dance and sing. 
Aiu — " Sure such a day." — Tom Thumb. 

Lear. 

Dance, Regan ! dance, with Cordelia and Goneril — 
Down the middle, up again, poussette and cross ; 
Stop, Cordelia ! do not tread upon her heel, 
Regan feeds on coltsfoot, and kicks like a horse. 
See, she twists her mutton fists like Molyneux or 

Beelzebub, 
And t' other^s clack, who pats her back, is louder 

far than helFs hubbub. 
They tweak my nose, and round it goes — 1 fear 

they '11 break the ridge of it, 
Or leave it all just like Vauxhall, with only half 

the bridge of it.* 

Omnes. 

Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 



* Vauxhall Bridge then, like the Thames Tunnel at present, 
stood suspended in the middle of that river. 



154 rejected addresses. 

Lady Macbeth. 

/ killed the king ; my husband is a heavy dunce ; 
He left the grooms unmassacred^ then massacred 

the stud. 
One loves long gloves ; for mittens, like king's 

evidence, 
Let truth with the fingers out, and won't hide blood. 

Macbeth. 

When spoonys on two knees implore the aid of 

sorcery, 
To suit their wicked purposes they quickly put the 

laws awry ; 
With Adam 1 in wife may vie, for none could tell 

the use of her, 
Except to cheapen golden pippins hawked about 

by Lucifer. 

Omnes. 

Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 



Othello. 

Wife, come to life, forgive what your black lover 

did, 
Spit the feathers from your mouth, and munch roast 

beef; 
lago he may go and be tossed in the coverlid 
That smothered you, because you pawned my hand 

kerchief. 

George Barnwell. 

Why, neger, so eager about your rib immaculate ? 

Milwood shows for hanging us they Ve got an ugly 
knack o' late ; 

If on beauty 'stead of duty but one peeper bent 
he sees, 

Satan waits with Dolly baits to hook in us appren- 
tices. 

Omnes. 

Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday. 
Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 



156 rejected addresses. 

Hamlet, 
I 'm Hamlet in camlet, my ap and perihelia 
The moon can fix, which lunatics make sharp or 

flat, 
I stuck by ill luck, enamoured of Ophelia, 
Old Polony like a sausage, and exclaimed, ^' Rat, 

rat!" 

Ghost. 

Let Gertrude sup the poisoned cup — no more I '11 
be an actor in 

Such sorry food, but drink home-brewed of Whit- 
bread's manufacturing. 

Macheath. 
I '11 Polly it, and folly it, and dance it quite the 

dandy O ; 
But as for tunes, 1 have but one, and that is Drops 

of Brandy O. 

Omnes. 

Round let us bound, for this Is Punch's holyday, 
Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 



punch's apotheosis. 157 

Juliet. 

1 'm Juliet Capulet, who took a dose of hellebore — ■ 
A hell-of-a-bore I found it to put on a pall. 

Friar. 
And I am the friar, who so corpulent a belly bore. 

Apothecary. 
And that is why poor skinny 1 have none at all. 

Romeo. 
1 'm the resurrection-man, of buried bodies amorous. 

Falstaff. 

I 'm fagged to death, and out of breath, and am 

for quiet clamorous ; 
For though my paunch is round and staunch, I 

ne'er begin to feel it ere I 
Feel that I have no stomach left for entertainment 

military. 



158 rejected addresses. 

Omnes. 

Round let us bound, for this is Punch's holyday, 
Glory to Tomfoolery, huzza ! huzza ! 

lExeunt, dancing. 



" ' Punch's Apotheosis,' by G. Colman, junior, is too purely 
nonsensical to be extracted : and both gives less pleasure to 
the reader, and does less justice to the ingenious author in 
whose name it stands, than any other of the poetical imita- 
tions." — Edinhurs'h Review. 



" We have no conjectures to offer as to the anonymous au- 
thor of this amusing little volume. He who is such a master 
of disguises may easily be supposed to have been successful 
in concealing himself, and, with the power of assuming so 
many styles, is not likely to be detected by his own. We 
should guess, however, that he had not written a great deal in 
his own character — that his natural style w^as neither very 
lofty nor very grave — and that he rather indulges a partiality 
for puns and verbal pleasantries. We marvel why he has 
shut out Campbell and Rogers irom his theatre of living poets, 
and confidently expect to have our curiosity in this and in all 
other particulars very speedily gratified, when the applause of 
the country shall induce him to take off his mask." — Edin- 
burgh Review. 



APOTHEOSIS. 159 



The Morning Post. 

Additional note intended for p. 127. — This journal was, at 
the period in question, rather remarkable for the use of the fig- 
ure called by the rhetoricians catachresis. The Bard of Avon 
may be quoted in justification of its adoption, when he writes 
of taking arms against a sea, and seeking a bubble in the mouth 
of a cannon. 2Tie Morning Post, in the year 1812, congrat- 
ulated its readers upon having stripped oif Cobbett's mask and 
discovered his cloven foot ; adding, that it was high time to 
give the hydra-head of faction a rap on the knuckles ! 



THE END. 



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